


The MAGNUS Crew (Oneshots)

by Frankenby



Series: The MAGNUS Crew [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Also most of the cast is immortal, Angst, But most of the time they get better, Canon Asexual Character, Character Death, Crushes, F/F, Friendship, Genderfluid Characters, Hurt/Comfort, I almost forgot, I forgot to add that in earlier but then I remembered, I'm Bad At Tagging, IN SPACE!, Idiots in Love, Implied Sexual Content, It doesn’t get too gory but be careful guys, It’s just oneshots, I’m bad with naming stuff I’m sorry, I’m not British so sorry if the dialogue isn’t, I’m trans so a lot of them are trans, Kissing, M/M, Mechanisms AU, Mechanized TMA characters, Michael is an Eldritch Horror, Multi, Non-binary character, Octokittens - Freeform, Oh, Opening Up, Other, Poor attempts at writing human interaction, Poorly named planets, Swearing, There is no timeline I’m so sorry, Trans Characters, Transphobia (very brief), Trauma, Violence, backstories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:21:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 30,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23762233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frankenby/pseuds/Frankenby
Summary: I wanted to make a TMA Mechanisms AU, and I decided to use the list of Ridiculous Sentence Starters to write some warm up fics and also get some backstory out of the way. Maybe I’ll write something plot oriented with Elias, but I’ll be 100% honest with you, I have no idea what that would be about. For now, please enjoy these!
Relationships: Basira Hussain/Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Georgie Barker/Melanie King, Gerard Keay/Michael, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims (they aren’t together in this one but they like each other), Martin Blackwood/Peter Lukas (past), Michael "Mike" Crew/Tim Stoker
Series: The MAGNUS Crew [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1711840
Comments: 25
Kudos: 51





	1. The MAGNUS Crew

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter is just character information! Some of this stuff is mentioned in different chapters, but I wanted to go ahead and put some of it together. I’m writing it as though it’s information about the crew as listed in their archives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just some info about the characters!

MAGNUS  
The word or acronym was found scratched into the wall of Elias’s cabin. No one knows what it means, but everyone likes the sound of it.

Name: Gertrude Robinson  
Position: Starship  
Mechanism: Everything but her brain  
Home Planet: Unknown  
Gertrude used to be a human woman, but her brain is now part of the starship. She used to be able to talk, but a bit after Sasha arrived, she suddenly lost the ability to do so. Everyone thinks Elias may have done it, but no one is sure why. She is able to communicate using alarms, but she only ever does so if there is an emergency.

Name: Jonathan Sims  
Position: Archivist  
Mechanism: Eyes  
Home Planet: Descry  
He used to be the first mate back when Elias Bouchard was Captain, but he took on the role of archivist after Elias’s death. Elias offered him the opportunity to participate in an experiment when he was a college student struggling with debt. He agreed and participated in an experimental surgery to replace his eyes with mechanical ones. Despite this, he still wears glasses. He is the childhood friend and former roommate of Georgie Barker.

Name: Martin Blackwood  
Position: Doctor  
Mechanism: Lungs  
Home Planet: Algernon  
He hasn’t said much about how he came to meet Elias. It is known that he drowned prior to his mechanization and he says that Elias Bouchard helped him out of a difficult situation. He is an excellent doctor, but he doesn’t have a license to practice medicine anywhere. Given the fact that the MAGNUS crew is immortal, his services aren’t needed very often. Immortals are susceptible to illness, but it is rare that anyone onboard gets sick. Martin does use his talents elsewhere and has assisted in the eradication of several infamous plagues.

Name: Sasha James  
Position: Engineer  
Mechanism: All but her eyes and about 25% of her face  
Home Planet: Hamelin  
She has a Master’s degree in mechanical engineering, but she got a job as a factory worker. She was killed in an explosion, but that didn’t stop Elias from mechanizing what little of her remained. He also gave her a ‘moral switch.’ The two modes she has are Means Justify Ends and Ends Justify Means. In MJE mode, she will do anything she deems necessary if she believes the outcome of doing so is worth it. In EMJ mode, she will not do anything she considers immoral such as lying, cheating or stealing. She also refuses to harm or kill anyone or anything for any reason. Her personality does change very much when the switch is flipped, and it’s often difficult to tell which mode she is on. 

Name: Tim Stoker  
Position: Navigator  
Mechanism: Quicksilver blood  
Home Planet: Yarmouth  
Ever since he was mechanized, Tim has refused to return to his home planet. He is well remembered as the man who caused the death of Gregor Orsinov, the president of his home country whom many believed to be corrupt. Some people praised him for it, others loathed him. He was poisoned following this event, but it is impossible to determine who may have done it. He doesn’t really do any navigating, and when Elias was captain Tim used to research planets they had never been to before prior to visiting them.

Name: Daisy Tonner  
Position: Gunner  
Mechanism: Hands  
Home Planet: Trianum  
She and Basira were brought in together as they traveled in a starship of their own prior to their deaths. Daisy’s hands were missing when they arrived and she appeared to have been beaten. Her cause of death was most likely loss of blood, but she has not wanted to talk about her experience. Several years following their mechanization, Daisy and Basira entered a romantic relationship. 

Name: Basira Hussain  
Position: Pilot  
Mechanism: Throat and jaw  
Home Planet: Trianum  
Basira’s throat had been cut open from it’s base all the way to her chin. She likely died of asphyxiation. The only details of her death that she has told us so far is that she was murdered. Basira is an excellent pilot. Although Gertrude can pilot herself somewhat, she is unable to land or take off on her own and her reaction time is slower as well.

Name: Georgie Barker  
Position: Communications Manager  
Mechanism: Bones  
Home Planet: Descry  
She was mechanized shortly after Jonathan Sims. She made the decision to be mechanized after she developed Haan’s disease—a fatal disease which causes one’s bones to deteriorate—around the time she turned twenty. They don’t get many transmissions anymore, but Georgie always answers them when they do. She entered a relationship with Melanie King several years after she joined the MAGNUS Crew.

Name: Melanie King  
Position: Gunner  
Mechanism: Legs  
Home Planet: Unknown  
Melanie will not discuss what lead to her mechanization. When asked, she will tell a ridiculous story about how she lost her legs and the story changes every time. She has killed everyone in the crew at least once except for Georgie, whom she adores. 

Name: Gerard Keay  
Position: Quartermaster  
Mechanism: Heart  
Home Planet: Unknown  
It is known that he was stabbed in the heart with a knife, but he keeps the details of his death a secret. He enjoys collecting artifacts, especially ones with strange and supernatural power. He also keeps track of the ship’s supplies and does the crew’s shopping, which he says he enjoys doing.

Name: Michael  
Home Planet: Presumably Esmentiaras  
Michael is not a mechanism, but they are immortal. A long time after Elias’s death, Michael was found floating dead in space. A planet called Esmentiaras that should have been in the area in which their body was found is missing. There is no one who can give any details about it’s disappearance. Michael had no memory of anything and did not even know their own name. They only remembered it—or at least felt very drawn to it—when they persistently scrolled through a list of common names on a variety of planets. They have strange spiral patterns all over their skin except for the palms of their hands, the soles of their feet, and their face. The patterns are also colorful, but the colors seem to move and change as if they are fluid. The patterns also have a tendency to glow and their brightness seems to correlate with Michael’s mood and/or health.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to include the characters pronouns/genders/sexualities and of they’re trans or cis because it might come up in the future.  
> I’m a queer trans nonbinary person, so a lot of them are trans as well.
> 
> Jonathan Sims: biromantic asexual trans man, he/him  
> Martin Blackwood: gay trans man, he/him  
> Tim Stoker: bisexual cis man, he/him  
> Sasha James: pansexual cis woman, she/her  
> Georgie Barker: pansexual trans woman, she/her  
> Daisy Tonner: lesbian nonbinary woman, she/her they/them  
> Basira Hussain: bisexual cis woman, she/her  
> Melanie King: lesbian cis woman, she/her  
> Gerard Keay: gay trans nonbinary man, he/him  
> Michael: queer nonbinary person, they/them  
> Gertrude Robinson: queer cis woman, she/her  
> Elias Bouchard: gay trans man, he/him  
> Mike Crew: queer trans man, he/him


	2. Planets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just wanted to talk a bit about some planets mentioned in here. I realize some of the names are really bad and others are ones I just took from the Magnus Archives. I’m sorry. I’m not good at this. Some planets are supposed to represent certain fear entities, but I’ll leave it up to you guys to figure out which is which.

Alban: A decently sized biodiverse planet with a population of around 10 million people. Despite it’s growing population, overcrowding isn’t a major issue, even in some of it’s biggest cities. They also seem to worry less about the state of their environment that other planets, mainly because they take good care of it. 

Titan: A planet made entirely of ocean with platforms that are built above where weather occurs in the atmosphere. This is where cities are built. People who live their entire life on often never see rainfall, clouds, or the ocean unless they work below the city. Early settlers used to honor and worship the sky, and some people on Titan still do. Rather than saying things like “gods in heaven” the citizens of Titan will say “sky around me.”

Esmentiaras: There is no living person who knows anything about this planet, as people rarely visited it or left it. All we know is that one day it mysteriously disappeared.

Trianum: People attempted to colonize this planet many times, but their attempts were unsuccessful for various reasons. The thirty-first colony laid the foundations for the planet that it is today.

Yarmouth: The entire planet is associated with a particular incident in the country of Trinity involving the human-sized clockwork figures Yarmouth was so famous for making and supplying. Despite the fact that it was Trinity’s corrupt government that was responsible for the incident, people discarded their clockwork figures. Hardly anyone owns one anymore.

Mysary: An overcrowded and industrialized planet with a lot of people living in poverty. There are some lovely walled off cities for tourists and the rich to stay in, though. People always make jokes about how Mysary sounds like misery.

The Lukas’s Planet: A planet owned and inhabited solely by the Lukas family, an extremely rich bunch of people. Sometimes they have parties, allegedly, but no one can ever say they’ve been to one. People from other planets are said to marry into the Lukas family, but no one can recall a time when that happened, either.

Hamelin: It seems there’s always a war going on on Hamelin. A majority of the population has been enlisted in their country’s military at some point. There is also a lot of organized crime in the cities.

Algernon: There aren’t very many cities, as Algernon tends to focus on agriculture. 

Sannikov: A very lush and vibrant planet. Even populated areas seem overrun with flora and fauna, but the citizens coexist with it.

Eden: A planet inhabited by humans and angels. It used to have a lot of plant and animal life like Sannikov, but it has been growing more and more industrialized over the years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The incident on Yarmouth will be discussed in this work, by the way. Esmentiaras will be briefly discussed, but I plan on saving that backstory for a future work.


	3. “Who wouldn’t be angry? You ate all of my cereal and faked your death for three years!”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim probably should have mentioned to Mike he was immortal after they started dating. To be fair, though, Tim didn’t think he was going to be killed so unexpectedly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit for the prompts:  
> https://www.google.com/amp/s/toxixpumpkin.tumblr.com/post/108022477839/ridiculous-sentence-prompts/amp
> 
> There are some prompts listed on this list that I didn’t use for this work because I originally found these prompts in the images section of google and some were missing.
> 
> Anyways, I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Mike Crew: queer trans man, he/him

Titan was a pretty cool planet. Tim didn’t really know much about it’s history, but the planet was all water except for the bottom of the ocean. Some places were shallower than others, and they used these shallow areas to build the foundations of platforms that stretched pretty high up. The weather on Titan was always sunny because of the fact that the cities were built above the area where weather occurred, but there were channels built beneath the cities to collect rain water.

Tim didn’t know much more about the architecture on Titan or about its ecosystem—since he was pretty sure most planets couldn’t sustain life above the atmospheric layer where weather occurred—but he knew the basics of it. There was almost something unsettling about how blue the sky always was, but that wasn’t the reason he had delayed returning.

He shouldn’t have thought about Titan as often as he did, considering he had visited countless planets before, but his departure from the planet was sort of complicated.

The reason they had gone to the planet to begin with was because they needed food. Gerry was off fucking around with—or probably just fucking—some strange eldritch being they had found floating in space a century or two ago, and he was the one who normally stocked them up on supplies. They hadn’t eaten in months, which couldn’t technically kill them, but they still felt hunger. They landed on a college campus because there was enough room and they were tired of waiting. A student was sitting outside of what Tim assumed was a cafeteria and he had a container of cereal. Tim had asked if he could take it, but he didn’t really wait for a response and ate it anyways.

The man had laughed awkwardly when Tim told him he hadn’t eaten in months. He probably thought Tim was exaggerating.

The man introduced himself as Mike Crew, and Tim actually ended up becoming friends with the guy. He promised he’d get him more cereal, but he never did. 

The MAGNUS crew stayed on Titan for several months and the fact that Tim was immortal never came up, even though the two of them sort of ended up dating. They had never put an official label on it and it hadn’t gotten to the point of being in love with each other yet, but they made it clear they were attracted to each other, kissed each other, went on dates and screwed for those couple of months.

Then Tim died.

Which wasn’t a big deal, but Mike didn’t know that. He had promised Georgie they’d go out to lunch one day but he had lost track of the date, which Melanie apparently considered an unforgivable offense. She shot him in the head in front of a crowd of people, drug him onto Gertrude and decided she wanted to leave Titan. No one else really cared enough about Titan to object. Melanie still wasn’t finished with Tim, though. She hooked him to the ship’s tow cable, fading in and out of consciousness due to the absence of oxygen in space, and left him there for the same number of months as the number of hours Georgie had waited on him. Three. 

Anyways, they were a good distance from Titan by the time Georgie had convinced Melanie that it wasn’t that big of a deal. Apparently Georgie had been a bit disappointed that Tim forgot to meet her, and he honestly felt bad enough for that. 

Afterwards, they had to go retrieve Gerry from his tryst, then they had some errands to do. About a year had passed when Tim thought there was probably no point in returning to Titan. He sort of dreaded explaining things to Mike—who had probably moved on by this point—but he also wanted to see him again. After about three years since they had stopped at Titan, he decided he wanted to go back.

Sasha, Basira, Martin and Georgie of course supported him on their own, especially since Georgie felt she was sort of responsible for them being separated, and Melanie and Daisy were convinced by their girlfriends to go along with it. Jon and Gerry were indifferent.

Enough time had passed that everyone had pretty much forgotten about the incident where a woman had killed a man and dragged his body onto a starship. Well, the police probably hadn’t, but none of the MAGNUS crew were bothered by that.

It took Tim five days to work up the courage to visit the apartment Mike had lived in three years ago, but eventually he did.

Conveniently, Mike still lived there.

And his reaction was what one would expect from someone seeing a person who they were sure was dead for the first time in three years.

“What the fuck?” Mike’s face lacked any sort of expression for a moment as he tried to process everything that was going on.

“Hey!” Tim really didn’t mean to sound like a dick, but he didn’t know what else to say.

“You...” Everything hit Mike at once and all of his muscles tensed. “What the fuck? What the actual fuck?”

“I know you probably have a lot of questions right now, but, uh... surprise! I’m not actually dead!”

Mike placed the palm of his hand against his forehead and used his other hand to hold onto the door frame.

“Maybe you should sit down?” Tim suggested.

“No!” Mike was clinging to the doorframe with both handles, like he was trying to block Tim from coming in. 

“I’m not a ghost or anything, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Tim meant it as a joke, but he noticed there was no humor in his voice. “I... I should have come back sooner, or explained everything to you before something like this happened.”

“What do you mean?” Mike’s knuckles we’re turning white from how hard he was gripping the doorframe. Tim showed him his hands before he reached for Mike’s wrists, having to use a bit of force to move them away from it. Tim noticed his hands were trembling, then he felt that horrible guilt that he had been dreading drape itself over him.

“I’m immortal.” Tim exhaled the words after taking a very deep breath. Mike looked at him for a moment, then he jerked his shaking hands away from Tim and clenched them into fists. His right hand remained by his side only for a moment before he punched Tim in the shoulder. It wasn’t hard, and Tim wasn’t sure if Mike was deliberately restraining himself or if any strength that might’ve been behind the blow had been drained by shock.

“You bastard!” Mike kept his hand on Tim’s shoulder, his knuckles digging into it. “And where have you been for the past three years if you weren’t dead all this time?”

“Well... I was dead for some of the time,” Tim confessed. “But I was also kinda busy.”

“Sky fucking around me, Tim,” Mike sighed. “I don’t know if I want to kiss you or hit you again.”

“I get that you’re really angry with me right now, but I’m hoping you’ll pick the first option anyways.”

“Who wouldn’t be angry?” Mike tore his hand from Tim’s shoulders and crossed his arms. “You ate all of my cereal and faked your death for three years!”

“You’re still hung up on the cereal thing?” Tim rolled his eyes but smiled. “I’m starting to think you’re mad that I died only because I never paid you back for it. Also, I didn’t fake my death, my friend—“

Mike grabbed Tim by his shirt and pulled him down into a kiss, which was basically all teeth at first. Tim was fairly sure it was supposed to remain violent and angry until Mike pulled away, but his kisses grew softer and slower after awhile. He still looked grumpy when he pulled away, even though he was flushed red and breathing heavily.

“Anyways,” Tim raised his eyebrows and continued where he left off. “My friend got kind of mad at me because I forgot about our lunch plans, so her girlfriend got mad and she shot me.”

“Wow,” Mike scoffed. “That’s all you did? I’m not surprised she shot you, I’m just surprised you didn’t do something worse.”

“Rude.”

“Get in here,” Mike gestured for Tim to come inside, then shut the door behind him.

“Anyways, the girl who shot me also left me in space for three months,” Tim said. “But then her girlfriend felt really bad about it so they brought me back inside, then we had other stuff to do and time tends to blur when you’re immortal.”

“So your friends are immortal, too?” Mike asked.

“Yeah. The whole crew is.”

“What crew?”

Although Tim tried to make a pun about Mike’s last name, nothing came to him.

“Well... there’s a lot to explain,” Tim wasn’t even sure he would tell Mike everything. Thousands of years of life leaves room for lots of unpleasant experience, and Tim wasn’t even happy being made immortal in the first place. He was also pretty sure Mike didn’t want to hear all about his trauma after what had just happened, but he could at least explain everything about the MAGNUS crew. “Would me taking you out for a drink and telling you about it make up for me eating me cereal and making you believe I was dead for three years?”

Mike scoffed, still looking pretty irritated with Tim, which was better than he had anticipated and completely justified.

“It might make up for the cereal thing,” Mike said.

“I’ll take the chance,” Tim grinned, but then his expression softened. “And for the record, I really am sorry.”

“I know you are,” Despite the fact that he still seemed annoyed with him, Mike pulled Tim into a hug. “But you still owe me a drink.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, so I’m terrified of putting this work out here for some reason! I’m very anxious to do so right now, and even though the people on this site are nothing but sweet and constructive, I will ask that you be gentle with me.  
> I do accept and appreciate any criticism though provided that it is constructive. The number of spelling mistakes probably aren’t as bad as in my other works because I actually had a beta reader this time. (Thanks, Sky!)  
> Also, I already wrote every single chapter for this work because I refused to start another project on here and not finish it. So you don’t have to worry about that, either! (Unfortunately, this may be the only work I do because I tend to get easily overwhelmed, so I’m not going to promise anything.)  
> Anyways, please be patient with me. I am very small and very anxious. Comments are also always appreciated, even if you’re just keysmashing. (I actually really appreciate those comments because I know for a fact I made you feel something.)


	4. “Quick! Catch that cat, it stole my wallet!”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon recently adopted octokittens and they’re absolute bastards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Helen: lesbian trans woman, she/her
> 
> Well! I messed up really bad prior to posting this and I accidentally deleted my revised copy of this fic. I hope I didn’t miss anything, but I’m pretty sure I corrected all the spelling mistakes. The notes app loves changing words like gestures to gestures and vice versa, so I’m sorry if I missed something like that. Don’t be afraid to let me know if there’s a mistake or something!

Melanie always considered herself a person who likes cats. She had never really been around them, though, until Georgie got the Admiral. Immortal and mechanized like the rest of the crew—he probably had been for longer than any of them had been alive—he was one of Elias’s first test subjects, and he was the sweetest thing. Georgie had fallen in love with him at first sight, and although the Admiral was very attached to everyone on the ship, everyone knew he was Georgie’s cat.

The octokittens were fucking bastards, though. Jon had adopted five of those motherfuckers, and they were more equipped to be predators than regular cats. They could climb up walls and on the ceiling using their suckers and tentacles, which meant they loved dive bombing people. If those creatures weren’t one of the few things Jon loved, Melanie would have probably put them in an escape pod and sent them to another planet by now.

They hadn’t gone so far as committing acts of thievery, though. Melanie would’ve been impressed if one of the little fuckers hadn’t stolen her wallet shortly after they had landed on the planet Alban and then ran out one of the doors. 

Melanie didn’t know why she had expected octokittens to be slower than regular cats, but they weren’t. She had legs of literal steel, but she was having trouble keeping up with the thing. They had run into a city at nighttime, and she was scared she would lose track of it. Since her lungs weren’t made of steel—that was Martin’s thing—she felt like she was going to collapse at any second. The streets weren’t too crowded, but she still managed to bump into a woman wearing a large hat, which finally made her stop.

“Quick!” She pointed at the octokitten that sucked into an alleyway. “Catch that cat that stole my wallet!”

She was breathing heavily, and the woman looked concerned. She walked over to the entryway to the alley, crouched down and wiggled her fingers at it.

“Here, kitty kitty!” She called to it, and made it’s way over to her almost immediately, dropping the wallet on the ground and rubbing it’s head against her hand, making Melanie look like a prick.

“Thanks...” Melanie’s legs stood firm, but she let the rest of her body go limp as she gasped for breath. The woman handed her her wallet and Melanie put it in one of her inner jacket pockets.

“Is this your octokitten?” The woman asked.

“It’s a friend of mine’s,” Well, Jon wasn’t really her friend, but she didn’t have time to go into that. 

“I’ve never seen one in person,” The woman picked the now purring octokitten up and held it to her chest. “They’re so cute.”

“I’d give it to you if I didn’t think my friend would kill me for it,” Melanie stood up straight and the woman tried to hand the cat over to her, but it screeched in protest and wrapped it’s tentacles around the woman’s chest.

“Oh!” The woman exclaimed.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Melanie wasn’t sure how she’d be able to get a grasp on the thing, and she didn’t try to. 

“It’s fine,” The woman petted the octokitten on the head and it was content once again. “Would you like me to—“

“Helen?” A tall and familiar figure approached, illuminated by the soft, glowing spiral patterns on their skin.

“Oh, hey, Michael,” Melanie waved a bit.

“Hello,” Something seemed slightly off about Michael, and despite the fact that they lived on Gertrude for a few decades, Melanie still didn’t know them well enough to accurately make that assumption, so she didn’t bring it up. “Is Gerry with you?”

“No, but I guess he’s on his way. I was just chasing this little bastard down,” Melanie pointed to the cat strapped to Helen’s chest. As though on cue, it hissed. “I don’t think he wants to come with me.”

“Oh, well maybe I can help you take him back?” Helen offered, then glanced to Michael. “That way you and Gerry can have some privacy as well?”

“Sure,” Melanie shrugged.

“Alright. Give me a call when you’re done, but take all the time you need.”

“Thank you,” Michael said softly. Something was definitely wrong. Allegedly, Michael didn’t like to get tied down with people in any capacity because they were so intent on finding out who they were or who they used to be, or something like that. Melanie didn’t really know, but Michael had some reason for not just staying on Gertrude with Gerry and only meeting with him every few years so they could spend a couple of months together. It wasn’t her business, but she wondered why he was so familiar with this woman Helen if that was true. 

“So, you’re...?” Helen looked at Melanie for a moment as if studying her after they started walking. “Ooh, Daisy?”

“Melanie,” She corrected.

“Melanie, right,” Helen nodded. “Michael’s told me all about you lot. Well, they mostly talk about Gerry and they’ve also mention Martin a bit more often than everyone else.”

“Makes sense,” Melanie said. “Martin’s the one who took care of them after we found them.”

“He’s the medic, isn’t he?” Helen asked, and Melanie nodded. “On a ship of immortals?”

“Well, we get sick sometimes and I guess if we ever ran into non-immortals it’d be useful to have a doctor.”

“And you’re one of the gunners?” 

“Yeah, me and Daisy are both gunners.”

Helen sort of hummed in acknowledgement.

“So, who’s octokitten is this?” She asked.

“Jon’s. He’s not my friend, by the way,” Melanie added. 

“Oh,” Helen seemed a bit shocked. “Alright.”

“I don’t mean that in a bad way, we just... aren’t.”

“Well, you don’t have to be friends with everyone,” Helen said.

“Speaking of friends, how do you know Michael?” If they were making smalltalk, Melanie might as well ask.

“Well, you know they’re from Esmentiaras,” Helen began. “Well, I was as well. I left before it... er, disappeared, though.”

“So, you’re immortal, then?” Whatever happened on Esmentiaras happened centuries ago, so Helen must have been immortal or just someone who aged really slowly.

“Yes, actually, I...” Helen pressed her lips together and took of her hat, revealing that her crown was made of something bronze. “I’m sort of like you, I think. My brain is robotic and I can’t die.”

“Who did it?” Melanie asked quickly. “When did it happen?”

She didn’t mean to pry, but if Helen’s mechanization had happened after Elias’s death, then that meant he was back. Everyone knew his return was possible, but they hoped he would just stay dead.

“I... I have no idea who did it or how it happened, but Esmentiaras was destroyed twenty years after it happened,” Helen said. “I think my memory of the incident was erased or something? It hurts to think about.”

“Right,” Melanie clenched her jaw shut. Maybe it wasn’t Elias. He wasn’t the only person capable of mechanization. “So do you have any idea what happened with Michael?”

“It’s not really my business to say,” Helen put the hat back on her head. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, I understand,” Right. It wasn’t Melanie’s business, either. 

“Thank you.” Helen smiled and seemed relieved.

“So, what kind of stuff do you do?”

“Well, I’ve lived most of my life on Alban. I couldn’t imagine constantly going from planet to planet like you and your crew do, but I suppose your ship and your friends would become your home, would they?” Helen paused, but Melanie gave no response, figuring her question was rhetorical. “It kind of sounds cheesy, but more than anything I’d like to ensure that Alban is a free a just planet.”

“Oh? So you’re like a superhero or something?” 

“Oh, no. I don’t fight or arrest people or anything like that, I just...” Helen thought for a moment. “I’ll feel bad if I say it, like I’m not doing it because it’s right but for attention, you know?”

“I... don’t know, I guess?”

“I’m sorry, I just keep acting mysterious, don’t I?” Helen laughed, stroking the head of octokitten that had fallen asleep at some point. She was obviously nervous.

“Well, you don’t have to tell me everything about yourself. You’re allowed to keep secrets, especially from people you don’t know well.”

“Right. Thank you,” Helen became quiet, and she instead focused on the octokitten, continuing to pet and whisper to it to keep herself occupied. When they arrived at Gertrude, Helen almost looked like she wanted to make a comment about it, but she was still quiet.

“Would you like to come in?” Melanie offered.

“Oh, no thank you. I was just leaving my apartment to go for a walk when we ran into each other, actually,” Helen had gotten the octokitten to release the grip it had on her, but even when she let it drop out of her hands and onto the ground, it stayed by her feet.

Melanie would be lying if she said she wasn’t a bit disappointed. Helen seemed quite interesting, even though she had gotten a bit more closed off at the end of their conversation. She would’ve liked to talk to her more.

“I think it likes you,” Melanie said. “Might be hard to get it to go inside myself.”

“Hold on,” Helen took her hat off. It was a black sunhat, so the brim of it was somewhat flexible. She started waving it at the octokitten, then it slammed a tentacle down on it. Once she was sure it was interested, she asked Melanie to open it for her and tossed the hat inside.

“Are you gonna want that back?” Melanie asked.

“Keep it,” Helen wanted it off. “Use it to appease that octokitten if you need to.”

Said octokitten was already curled up inside the hat, sleeping again.

“Maybe I’ll see you again soon?” It was a more a request than anything.

“Maybe,” Helen said. “And maybe I can meet the rest of the crew next time?”

“And the rest of the octokittens,” Melanie smiled genuinely, but it was a small smile. “I know one in particular would be happy to see you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I was going to write a plot oriented fanfiction (that was actually put in an order similar to the timeline) then this would be the most recent thing that happened out of all the other things that happen in other chapters, just so you know.


	5. “I feel like I got hit by a car... wait, I did? And it was your car?”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Basira didn’t mean to hit someone with her car, but things actually turned out pretty alright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sorry I really hate the name Trianum but I just put “three one” into google translate and put it in Latin and merged the words together. I didn’t know what to name it so I was like, “Section 31” and now this is here.

Basira was unaware of what words were streaming out of her mouth in her panic, but she was fairly sure she was cursing as she scrambled out of the car to check on the person she had just hit.

It wasn’t her fault, although she wasn’t at the point where she was trying to convince herself of that. They had run out in front of her. She couldn’t think of how fast she had been going, but she was 100% sure she killed the person. They were laying on the ground, their arms stretched out in front of them.

Basira took a few deep breaths to calm herself. There was no one else on the road that she could see, so she’d have to handle the situation herself. She knelt next to the person on the ground, her arms shaking as she was about to check their wrist for a pulse, but then the person groaned and lifted their head slightly. Oh god, they had skinned part of their face and a good portion of their hands and arms on the road when they fell. It was then that Basira noticed the blood pooling on the asphalt.

“I feel like got hit by a car...” The person groaned, then they looked at their injuries.

“Well, you sort of... did,” Basira explained, wringing her own hands frantically. “I’m sorry about that?”

“Wait, I did?” The person was clearly in a daze, and they started to try and get up, ignoring Basira’s protests. Then they made the connection. “And it was your car?”

“I’m so so sorry,” Basira apologized again. What else was she supposed to do? “Don’t get up, I’ll call an ambulance.”

“No, wait, it wasn’t your fault,” That should’ve been reassuring, but the person sounded panicked when the said it. “I can’t wait for an ambulance.”

The person scrambled to their feet, falling immediately into Basira’s arms.

“Wait, why not?” Basira wasn’t sure if she should try and keep the person there or let them go, but they were twisting frantically away from her and she was sure they might hurt themselves.

“I’m being followed,” They grabbed onto the front of Basira’s car, smearing blood on it. “I have to go.”

“Wait, I don’t think you should,” Basira stepped closer to the person. Their legs were shaking and Basira knew if they let go of the car they would fall. “How about I drive you to the hospital?”

“Yes,” They looked around. The road they were on was lined by trees, but the sun was setting and it was hard to see past a certain point. “Quickly.”

Basira helped the person into the passenger seat of the car, still feeling like they shouldn’t be moved. There wasn’t much else she could do, though. They clearly weren’t planning on sticking around, and Basira didn’t know how far they would be willing to go to get away. They were a stranger, after all.

“Maybe don’t go to sleep?” Basira tried to be firm as the person leaned their head against the window and shut their eyes. For a second, they didn’t react, but then they groaned and lifted their head, their eyelids fluttering every now and again as they tried to keep them open. “Just... I don’t think you’re supposed to.”

The person hummed, but they looked like they were going to pass out any second.

Basira pulled a map up to the nearest hospital on her phone and started driving. She should probably drive fast, right? If this person was injured and/or being followed, it made sense to go fast, right? Basira wasn’t even thinking about the possibility of getting pulled over. She just accelerated as smoothly as possible. It was lucky the roads were empty. 

“You should talk,” Basira suggested. “That might help keep you awake. Can you do that?”

“I think so...” Their lips barely moved. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Who were you running from?” Basira was genuinely curious, but the answer was low on the list of her priorities right now.

“I guess that’s a fair question,” The person managed a weak smile. “I won a starship from some prick awhile back, and he suddenly decided he wants it back. I suspected he might pull some shit like this, so I hid it.”

Basira was about to freak out over the fact that this person had a starship. Part of her had always loved the idea of traveling in space, and there wasn’t much for her on Trianum, but starships were so expensive that she hadn’t even seen one in person.

“You haven’t flown out of here on it yet?” Basira asked.

“Better to fly with others,” They said. “Haven’t got anyone, so I haven’t left yet.”

“Oh...” 

“You’re good at driving,” They told her, although that was a biased observation, considering the street they were on was straight and empty. “You’d make a good pilot, maybe. You should come with me.”

Basira couldn’t actually be thinking about accepting the offer to go into space with this stranger she hit with her car, could she? No matter how attractive the idea and said stranger were. She also couldn’t be thinking about how the person she hit with her car was attractive, because that was kind of a weird observation to make at the moment. 

“What’s your name? Probably should’ve asked that first.”

“Alice,” They replied. “But, uh... call me Daisy, actually. People used to call me that when I was a little girl... I liked it.”

“Why’d they call you Daisy?” 

“I got a scar on my back that looks like a Daisy.”

“I’m guessing you’ve got a history of getting injured, then?”

Daisy made a sound that might have been a laugh, but it was more of a pained huff.

“Sorry,” Basira realized that might’ve been a shitty thing to say.

“It’s fine. It was funny.”

It wasn’t that funny, but Daisy’s sense of humor was probably pretty skewed at the moment.

“What’s your name?” Daisy asked.

“Basira.”

“That’s a nice name, never heard it before...” Daisy’s eyes shut briefly.

“Stay with me, Daisy,” Basira pushed the gas pedal further down.

“Right,” Daisy’s eyes shot open and focused on Basira. They were dark, almost black in color. She could feel them on her now as a warmth against the side of her face, but it wasn’t a burning feeling. Normally the feeling of being watched was uncomfortable, but Basira felt like she was being taken in—not apart—by Daisy’s eyes. “You’re pretty.”

Daisy’s head slumped forwards after having said the words. Fuck, Daisy was fucking dead. Basira suddenly became very aware of the amount of blood in the passengers seat, then the gas pedal hit the floor. Basira had out of body experiences before, but this one felt strangely ethereal. The concern left her body as adrenaline coursed through her veins, and she was light on her feet when she had gotten out of the car and ran inside the hospital for help.

Daisy, as it turned out, was fine. She had apparently been running for a few hours before Basira had hit her, and the pain of her injuries mixed with her exhaustion made it pretty hard to stay awake. Nothing was broken, and other than the fact that she had skinned herself pretty badly she only had a minor concussion and a few bruised ribs. 

It still felt weird going in to see them once they had woken up. Basira felt like she didn’t belong there, but she at least thought she should exchange a few words with Daisy after what had happened.

“You’re still here?” Daisy sat up when Basira entered the room.

“Oh, should I not be?” 

“No, it’s fine,” Daisy’s reclined back against the bed as Basira drew nearer. “I’m just surprised is all.”

“I wanted to check on you,” Basira explained. “I was kinda worried that you’d died.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Well,” Daisy looked surprised. “Sorry I worried you, then.”

“It’s fine. I mean, I got to go over the speed on my speedometer for the first time ever to get you here, so I guess something good came out of this.”

Daisy smiled.

“I wondered why I felt like I was getting thrown somewhere before I passed completely out,” She said. “I thought I was dead, too. But I’m glad you had fun.”

“Sorry I scared you.”

“I wasn’t scared, really. I just expected death to feel more like falling,” Daisy laughed the same way that she had earlier, the one that almost made you wonder if she was really laughing at all.

“Do you... need anything else, or are you good?” Basira was starting to feel like she overstayed her welcome.

“No, I don’t think so.”

Right, then. 

“Alright,” Basira started fiddling with her hands. “Goodbye, then.”

“Goodbye, Basira.”

Basira took a few steps towards the door, then stopped.

“I know you probably didn’t mean it when you said I’d make a good pilot earlier, you probably don’t even remember, but... did you mean it when you asked me to come with you to space?” It almost sounded ridiculous now that she’d said it all out loud, and she was beginning to regret it as Daisy remained quiet.

“Sure,” She said finally. “But I’m leaving as soon as I’m back on my feet.”

“I though you needed a crew?” Excitement and anxiety were both starting to wedge their way beneath Basira’s skin.

“With you, I’ve got one,” Daisy said. 

“Really?”

“Yeah. I didn’t want to go into space alone, now I won’t be.”

Maybe this was a bad idea. Basira didn’t know the first thing about space travel, but the thought of staying where she was much longer made her feel ill. She would never get this chance again. Maybe Daisy was crazy, maybe she was crazy, maybe the two of them would die as soon as they left Trianum’s atmosphere, but Basira was ready.

“Should I call you Captain, then?” That was all Basira could think to ask.

“No,” Daisy actually cringed. “I don’t like the sound of that. I like to think of it like we’re... partners.”

“Partners?”

“Yeah.”

Partners. Huh. That was a very broad term.

“I like it, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And I think that’s all I’m gonna post for tonight. I really hope you guys like this.
> 
> What if I hit you with my car... but then you invited me to go into space with you...? And then we fell in love? 👉👈  
> Haha I’m joking, I’m joking...  
> Unless?


	6. “I can’t believe I’m sitting in space jail with you of all people.”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim meets someone from before his mechanization.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nikola: queer polyamorous genderless clockwork figure, it/it’s (she will use she/her in the future)

Tim had lost track of the year he was born in. It sounds like it’s a difficult thing to do, but it was hard to keep track of dates anymore. It wasn’t really a big deal, though. So what if he missed a few birthdays? Celebrating his own got old after a few hundred years anyways.

Even though a majority of solar systems technologically advanced enough to communicate with one another decided to adopt the same system of measuring time a few thousand years back, time was often a blur. Unless you’re able to look at the time, you can’t tell when a day has passed in space since there’s no night or day. He didn’t get tired as often as mortal people did, either, so he didn’t go to sleep every ‘night.’ 

Older dates were hard to remember, too, though. He didn’t remember what year he was born or the time period in which he was a mortal. Tim’s home planet of Yarmouth didn’t follow the standard measurement of time, either. Tim, of course, had no memory of how they did.

Anyways, there was a time where Trinity—a rather large country where Tim lived—decided to use clockwork figures as soldiers, which were basically cops. Of course, this caused controversy for quite a few reasons.

The first one was that people on Trinity feared that their jobs would be taken by the clockwork figures. Trinity’s government assured it’s citizens that the only people being replaced were soldiers. Tim didn’t like the soldiers, clockwork or otherwise, and neither did a majority of Trinity. The clockwork figurines didn’t exactly thrill anyone though, which is explained by the second reason.

The second reason people didn’t like this idea was the fact that clockwork soldiers were completely obedient and remorseless. Not entirely different from human soldiers, but they could still be swayed every now and again. The clockwork figures held the law above all else, though. They very strongly believe that the end justifies the means, and they thought if they followed orders then everything would turn out better because they were upholding the law.

The third reason was, of course, the morality of it. The clockwork soldiers were sentient, but they couldn’t think for themselves. People thought it was sick to force them to serve.

Another very common reason was that people claimed it was dangerous to have things without compassion working in the public, but that argument never made sense. It wasn’t that the clockworks couldn’t feel compassion or that the human soldiers they replaced could feel it themselves. The people who used this as an excuse either hated the clockworks for some reason or were severely misinformed.

Then there was, of course, the reason using clockwork figures as soldiers a never became popular anywhere else. They were expensive.

Tim’s family was strongly against the use of clockwork soldiers for moral reasons. They, along with an overwhelming majority of people, complained about the clockwork soldiers for a long time, but their complaints were ignored. After awhile, complaints turned to protests, which Tim’s family happily attended.

Tim hadn’t been there when things got bad, though. He was studying abroad at the time, but his brother Danny always kept him updated. Eventually the clockwork soldiers proved their usefulness by keeping protests ‘under control’ through the use of excessive force. They did whatever they had to to get people to disperse or leave an area, and that pissed people off. 

The first death during a protest didn’t happen for awhile though. An explosive device had been set off near the crowd, and while it hadn’t been close enough to injure anyone, three people were trampled to death by the panicked crowd.

This only increased support for the removal of clockwork soldiers, but someone decided upping the death toll was their best shot at getting everyone to give in. Clockwork soldiers had been ordered to fire into a crowd protesting outside of the Royal Opera House, killing hundreds. 

People were terrified, and they were afraid to congregate for any reason for a long time. Cities in Trinity that were normally bustling were practically empty within a few hours following the massacre. They stayed that way for awhile. 

Then some guy called Joseph Grimaldi decided that the best way to draw attention was to publicly call everyone who was against the clockwork soldiers to come and sign a petition outside the now infamous opera house, like this petition would be treated any differently than the other petitions people had signed when this whole things started. Of course, people didn’t want to do it. Over the course of the day, less than one thousand people showed up and signed. 

Tim’s family were among the people who did, but this petition was treated differently. President Gregor Orsinov read it over himself. Within the week clockwork soldiers were sent to the homes of every person who had signed that petition. Not a single person who signed it survived. As it turned out, Joseph Grimaldi was a pseudonym for someone working under Orsinov, and the petition had been a trap all along. 

Tim always wondered what might have happened if more people signed, but it was a number of people that Trinity’s government felt comfortable sacrificing to display their power.

Tim didn’t know about the petition at first. He just knew his family wasn’t responding when he tried to contact them that day. He tried to write off the heavy sense of dread he felt as paranoia due to lack of sleep and stress over school, but he couldn’t. He booked a flight home that night. 

No one had made the connection between the people killed and the petition yet, but information about multiple families found dead in their homes was leaked while Tim was on the ship taking him to Trinity. He managed to get all the way home without hearing anything about it.

The first thing he found was a clockwork soldier, waiting patiently in front of the door when he opened it. Tim had jolted when he saw it, but it stood completely still. It’s face had been smashed in by something, and bronze and silver gears were sticking out of the cracks and holes in it’s painted face. 

“Hello citizen! My name is Nikola Orsinov!” It greeted in it’s cheerful, artificial voice. All the clockwork soldiers were named, but Tim didn’t know why. They all had the same last name as the president who instated them, and their first names always meant something ‘patriotic.’ Tim didn’t know what Nikola meant, and frankly he didn’t care. “How may I assist you?”

Tim waited to see if it would do anything, but instead it just repeated itself. Tim pushed passed it and searched the house, feeling a dizzying wave of panic wash over him.

He found his family in their beds with their eyes closed. There was no blood anywhere, no wounds. Tim had checked himself so that he could know how they died. For a few minutes he was obsessed with finding that out, but there was nothing. 

Tim didn’t say anything. He didn’t cry. He just walked slowly around the house for awhile until he was back in the living room where the front door was. The clockwork soldier hadn’t moved.

“Did you do this?” He asked it, but it didn’t answer. “Tell me.”

“Yes!” It’s reply was sudden and it might have been surprising. “With the assistance of Breekon Orsinov and Hope Orsinov!” 

The clockwork soldier’s voice stuttered and echoed for a moment when it said ‘Breekon.’ It probably meant to say ‘Beacon,’ but it was malfunctioning due to it’s condition.

“How did they die?” 

Again, the clockwork soldier said nothing. 

“How did they die?” Tim repeated himself, a bit firmer this time, but it didn’t say a word. He left after that. He wanted to be angry at it, but he wasn’t. 

He got his revenge in the end. A group of people who called themselves freedom fighters decided to kill Orsinov. Tim was the one to do it. He blew up Orsinov’s house while they were both inside. It was a surprisingly easy task, considering everyone who called themselves a freedom fighter was present to take down the clockwork soldiers defending him, so there were over a hundred thousand people participating. It didn’t kill Tim like he had thought it would. He hadn’t planned to die, but he never made any plan to not die.

What killed him was poison. Yeah, some prick poisoned his drink the very same night while he was at the bar. He never knew who or why, but he was picked up by Elias after that. Maybe it was actually Elias who did it, he did seem rather excited about getting to replace someone’s blood with quicksilver.

He never planned on returning to Yarmouth again, and he didn’t, but that wasn’t the last he saw of Nikola Orsinov.

He and the MAGNUS crew stopped at this space station that was actually a shopping center where public drunkenness is extremely discouraged. For some reason, Gerry and Sasha thought the concept of going to jail in a space mall was hilarious, so they laughed at him when he got taken away. Bastards. The whole experience of being arrested in a space mall was admittedly surreal, and since he was drunk he thought he might have somehow been imagining the clockwork figure sitting across from him in his cell.

“Are you real?” He decided to ask it.

“Hello!” It said in that all too familiar voice. “Yes! I’m real! My name is Nikola Orsinov!”

“No you fucking aren’t.” Tim crossed his arms like an indignant child. No way it was the same clockwork figure. No fucking way.

“I am!” Nikola looked different when it’s face wasn’t bashed in. In fact, it didn’t have a face at all. The only paint it had on was white paint covering its entire body, or at least everywhere that it’s red suit wasn’t covering.

“I can’t believe I’m sitting in space jail with you of all people...” Seriously, what were the odds of this bullshit actually happening? 

“You are in fact sitting in space jail, but I am not a person!” Nikola helpfully informed him.

“Why are you here?” Tim didn’t know what else to ask it, and he didn’t care that making small talk with the thing that killed his family was probably pretty weird. Well, it wasn’t entirely it’s fault and he was drunk anyways, and who really cared? He might as well do it.

“I was an accessory to a heist!” Nikola explained. “I was disguised as a mannequin in a very expensive clothing store and I was meant to open the door after closing time! The security cameras gave me away, though, and now I have to stay here until I am picked up by the proper authorities!”

“You’re better at answering questions than you were last time.”

“Last time you asked me questions, you only ordered me to answer once!” Nikola didn’t even pause in order to remember who Tim was. “I was damaged, and I had to sit and wait for further instruction from my superiors! Something was wrong, though, so I listened to the order you gave me as well!”

“What are you talking about?”

“You asked me, ‘Did you do this?’ Then you said, ‘Tell me.’ So I did!” 

Tim didn’t remember exactly how their interaction played out, but Nikola did. All he could do was believe it, but he didn’t want to. 

“So which one of them attacked you?” 

“Hope Orsinov!” Nikola answered.

“What?”

“Hope Orsinov!” It repeated.

“Why?”

“Our exact order was, ‘Kill Michelle, Laura, and Danny Stoker.’ We were never given specific instructions on how to kill them. They were sleeping when we arrived, and I did not wish to wake them, so I suggested we poison them! Hope Orsinov said it would take too long and the injection would wake them! I said that our task was given no time limit, and I did it anyways! Danny Stoker did wake at some point after he had been poisoned, and Hope Orsinov insisted on killing him itself! I told him to wait for the poison to take effect, and then it attacked me! Danny Stoker fell back asleep and died before it was done!”

So that’s how they died. Well, there were certainly worse ways to go than poisoning. Tim could personally attest to that. 

Fuck.

Now he really didn’t know how to feel about Nikola Orsinov. He knew that clockwork soldiers had some artificial replica of emotions and something similar to their own personalities, but the fact that it wanted the death of his family to be peaceful sounded so strange. It somehow made him hurt more, especially knowing his family would have been grateful to it.

“Fuck off!” Tim didn’t know what he was talking to, Nikola or his own emotions, but Nikola crawled under the bench it was sitting on and curled into a ball, facing away from Tim. “Did... did I upset you?”

Tim wasn’t asking because he felt bad—well, he sort of did—but he was that it would react that way.

“You have given me the order, ‘Fuck off!’ but you are still attempting to speak with me!” Nikola’s voice was as joyful as ever. “Would you like me to continue carrying out my order?” 

“You still follow the orders of anyone who gives them to you, then?” Tim asked, but Nikola began to repeat itself again, so he interrupted it. “You can quit fucking off, now.”

“Yes! I still follow any order I am given! My face was all that was repaired! I am still broken!” Nikola crawled back out from under the bench and stood up, placing it’s hands by it’s sides.

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Don’t be, I’m only clockwork!”

Something about Nikola saying that made Tim cringe.

“So you’ll do anything I tell you to do, then?”

“I will carry out any order you give me to the best of my ability!”

“Okay. Don’t follow anyone’s orders anymore,” Tim told it. “Unless you want to follow that order. Have free will.”

“What?” There was almost an emotion other than joy in Nikola’s voice.

“That’s my order. Have free will.”

“I don’t know how to do that,” Nikola was noticeably less intensely happy.

“Just do what makes you genuinely happy for a change. You’ll figure it out,” Maybe what Tim doing was a bad idea. He could’ve sat there and considered the things that could go wrong, but all he thought about was how his brother would talk passionately about making the will of the clockwork soldiers their own. He always wanted to find a way to do that, but he never knew how. You couldn’t go up to a regular clockwork soldier and tell it to do what Tim just said. They wouldn’t listen, but if there was a chance this would work, he’d take it. For Danny, for his mothers, and maybe even for Nikola. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about it, but he didn’t think it was bad.

“Tim Stoker?” The door to the cell was opened by the security guard that brought him in. “Someone is here to—“

Tim had never seen a clockwork soldier run. They seemed to march everywhere at various speeds instead, but Nikola had shoved the guard to the ground and ran off in a matter of seconds. The guard scrambled to his feet, chasing after it and calling out for it to stop. 

Tim figured that was his cue to leave, and the security guard hadn’t shut the door before running off. He stumbled a bit as he walked, since he was still drunk. Sasha was waiting for him outside.

“Well, that guy’s definitely fired,” She said. “How was space mall jail?”

“Fuck off.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had the urge to write sad/tragic/traumatic backstories this quarantine and I don’t know why.  
> Also, hello, I am shamelessly in love with Nikola Orsinov.  
> I’m not sure why I thought space mall jail was funny, but I did.  
> And Tim has two moms because this is my story and I get decide who’s gay. I literally just wrote down the first names I could think of for them, though.


	7. “So why did I have to punch that guy?”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael and Gerry visit each other again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE READ!  
> Although it doesn’t go into detail, one of the characters admits to being tortured. I know I tagged this as M, but I still wanted to let you guys know just in case.

Michael must have had a knack for finding artifacts. People had been living on Mysary most of their lives attempting to find any information about the Dorian Ring, but Michael found it in a little under seven years. It was at the end of a maze beneath an old art museum, and it had taken Michael a few weeks to get through it. They even died a few times down there, since there were traps around nearly every corner.

Michael had no practical use for the Dorian Ring, since all it did was make it’s wearer immortal. The downside was that it also corrupted the wearer’s soul, caused them to be paranoid and have homicidal tendencies. It’s hard to say what you’d do in a hypothetical situation, but Michael figured that if they were mortal, they might refuse the Dorian Ring. They didn’t think it was safe in the hands of any mortal, since their natural obsession with death often warped their mind and made them act irrationally.

They weren’t planning on letting a mortal get the ring, though. Gerry was fascinated with ancient and magical artifacts, so the ring was for him. It was why Michael had gone after it in the first place.

It had been awhile since the two of them saw each other. Something like fifty eight years, but they called Gerry when they first arrived on Mysary. Michael knew that Gerry didn’t like spending so much time apart, even though they never really talked about it, but they had to be whenever they were searching for answers about Esmentiaras. They didn’t know what they might find out about themselves, and that freaked them out.

It was just better if they searched for answers alone and met with Gerry every now and again. He understood that. Well, at least he acted like he understood.

They decided to meet him again after finding the Dorian Ring. Michael hadn’t come to Mysary intending to find it, but when they heard it was rumored to be somewhere on the planet they couldn’t help but look for it. Maybe they were looking for an excuse to see him again, but they weren’t sure why they’d need one.

They called him, and the two arranged to meet each other at club in the Silver City called Verve. Michael assumed asking Gerry to just meet them at their hotel would appear too forward, not that Gerry would be opposed to that. They also let Gerry know they had something for them, but they wouldn’t give anymore details.

They had been warned that people would probably try to kill them while they tried to obtain the Dorian Ring, but that never mattered to them. It was a bit of a surprise when they were grabbed by the throat and forced against the wall of an alley just outside of Verve the night they were supposed to meet Gerry, though.

Michael almost called them rude for it, but the man who grabbed them looked so angry that they thought against it. Instead, he very awkwardly asked, “Can I help you?” Which only made the man’s grip tighten.

Michael may have been immortal, but they didn’t appreciate not being able to breathe.

“You know what I’m here for.” His fingers loosened, but only slightly.

Well, Michael obviously wasn’t going to give this guy the Dorian Ring. They supposed he could kill them and take it, since they’d be incapacitated for awhile. They didn’t exactly feel like dying, and this guy was bigger than they were so they doubted they could fight him. At the same time, they didn’t want to willingly hand it over, so they might as well see how long they could mess with him.

“If you really wanted to pin me to a wall in an alley way, you could’ve asked me nicely.”

“Give it here,” The man inched closer to their face, but Michael maintained eye contact and smile politely.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,” Their voice sounded strained as it was difficult to speak with how hard the man was pressing on their throat. Their answer wasn’t the correct one, either, apparently. The man jerked them forward and then slammed them against the wall. Michael would’ve made a sound, but the man was clutching their throat so tightly that they were silent.

“Last chance,” The familiar fingers of death began to crawl from behind Michael’s head and into their field of vision. “Hand. It. O—“

The man might have finished his sentence if he hadn’t enunciated each word so carefully. He had been struck in the head by something, and he fell to the ground as it collided with his skull. He almost took Michael with him, but there were hands on their shoulders keeping them upright.

“Are you alright?” It took Michael a moment to come back to themselves, but Gerry was holding them as they did. They hadn’t died. They’d been pretty close, but the pain in their throat was already beginning to fade.

“Of course I am,” Michael draped their arms over Gerry’s shoulders, but the look of concern that Michael knew all to well was still on his face. They pressed a kiss to his forehead and heard him sigh. Gerry’s placed his hands on the small of Michael’s back, and rested his chin on their shoulder. They stood like that for a moment. Michael had forgotten how nice this was. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Gerry took a deep breath, then stepped away from Michael. “So why did I have to punch this guy?”

Said guy then kicked Gerry’s legs out from under him, which was a dick move. Gerry tried to say as much, but he was cut off by the sound of a gunshot. Actually, that had more to do with the fact that he got shot in the head. There was another shot, but this one was for Michael. He had shot them in the stomach, which always hurt like a bitch and that bastard must’ve known. Michael leaned forward, hands placed gingerly over the wound as they winced. 

Once more, the man pinned Michael against the wall by the throat. He didn’t ask for the ring again, though. He just sort of stared at them, angry and expectant.

They really, really didn’t want to do this. They placed one of their hands against the man’s face, which he must have assumed was Michael’s feeble attempt at hitting him, because he smiled before he died. He took Michael with him when he fell this time, though. 

They wiped the blood off of their now elongated, sharpened fingers on the dead man’s shirt, mumbling an apology as they did. In a place like the Silver City, one could assume the police would be taking their sweet time to get to the scene of a crime after hearing reports of a single gunshot, so they waited until they were healed to get up. They watched their claw-like hand with twisted fascination as they waited for it to finally revert into a normal, humanlike hand again. 

They hadn’t told Gerry about the knife hands, mainly because of Michael’s overwhelming fear that they were a monster and their fear of Gerry hating them for it, but they did have their uses. They were pretty sharp—the permanently dead guy on the ground had three holes in his skull that could attest to that—and not awkward provided they were using them to fight. They didn’t use them often though. The only person they enjoyed sticking their fingers in was also currently lying dead—temporarily—in an alleyway with a hole in his head, but that was a different kind of sticking their fingers in someone. Also, Gerry had never died from that and even if he did he’d come back anyways.

Speaking of Gerry, they should probably take him to their hotel. Regenerating after death took longer to do than normal injuries, and Michael found they always had a massive headache if they’d died from head trauma. Their own gunshot wound had healed long ago and their hands had returned to their original, less deadly form. 

Gerry was surprisingly easy to carry. He was quite a bit shorter than Michael, sure, but he was physically stronger than they were as he had been able to overpower them before. His heart made him pretty heavy as well. No one seemed to mind the fact that Michael was carrying around a dead body, but weird shit was always happening in the Silver City, so people likely didn’t think they were carrying a dead body based on how casual they were. They probably assumed Gerry was drunk or something. They were just glad that they avoided anymore confrontation for the evening. 

Michael laid Gerry out on the couch once they returned to their hotel room. They cleaned the blood from his head with a wash cloth and laid his head in their lap as they waited for them to wake up. 

Gerry always gasped and jerked a bit when he came back from the dead. This time was no exception, but Michael shushed him and ran a hand through his hair.

“What happened?” He groaned, and Michael traced nonexistent patterns onto Gerry’s skull as gently as they possibly could.

“You were shot in the head,” Michael told him. 

“Oh?” Gerry squinted up and Michael, who realized that the glowing spirals that twisted up their neck and stopping just shy of their jawline were probably a bit too bright for him. Michael covered his eyes with their hand and Gerry tried to push it away.

“Just... don’t look at me for a minute.”

“Why not?” Gerry tugged Michael’s hand away.

“Because I imagine you have a headache and looking at my spirals probably makes it worse,” Michael said that stuff like it wasn’t 100% true.

“It doesn’t,” Gerry kissed the palm of Michael’s hand—which they had washed prior to cleaning Gerry’s wound because they had blood on them earlier—and then shoved it away again. “So why’d that guy wanna kill you?”

“Oh, right,” Michael took the Dorian Ring from their shirt pocket and presented it to Gerry. “Here.”

“You...” Gerry took it and examined it. “Huh... What do you want for it?”

“Nothing. It’s for you,” Michael grinned a bit sheepishly as Gerry sat upright. 

“You let a guy choke you nearly to death to give me a ring?” Gerry looked at them like they were anomaly. Well, they were, but Gerry looked at them like they were an anomaly he’d never seen before.

“Why do you sound so surprised?” Michael had given him plenty of things like this before for free, but they’d never gotten attacked by someone over it. Gerry placed the ring down on the sitting parallel to the couch.

“Can I kiss you, please?” Gerry was already leaning subconsciously towards them. He always asked Michael if he could kiss them properly if they had been apart for a long time. Michael always said he didn’t have to ask, but Gerry did anyways.

“Yes. Please do.”

Gerry always kissed Michael like it would be the last time they would ever kiss one another. Michael made that connection just as Gerry’s attempt at restraint had failed. He kissed them chastely a few times, which he almost always did at first, before pushing them down on the couch. He waited for a moment to see if they would protest, then he kissed them again.

Kissing somebody like it’s the last time you would ever do it could be interpreted in a few ways. In Gerry’s case, he either kissed Michael fierce and rough with wild abandon or he would slowly and methodically try to kiss every inch of Michael’s exposed skin. 

He kissed them this time with aggressive enthusiasm, his gripping Michael’s shirt as he pressed them into the couch. Michael’s fingers threaded themselves through Gerry’s hair and latched onto it.

They were both panting when Gerry pulled away, and he moved his hands to cup Michael’s face. 

“You know, you probably shouldn’t do that anymore,” He said. “Putting yourself at risk to get artifacts, I mean.”

Michael must have looked at him funny.

“Don’t tell me that it’s fine because you’re immortal, either. There are people out there who can do worse things to you than kill you. I don’t... I don’t even really understand why you do it in the first place.”

“Because you like them,” Michael said.

“Right, I do like them, but you don’t have to get them for me,” Gerry pulled off of them completely. “You have more important things to focus on anyways, and there isn’t a single artifact that’s more important than you. I don’t even really care about having the artifacts in my possession than I do about recovering them. A lot of lost artifacts are culturally significant anyways, so I end up returning them to the people they’re important to, so just... you are alright, aren’t you?”

Gerry was making frantic gestures and bouncing his leg. Michael brushed some of Gerry’s hair behind his ear.

“I’m alright, Gerry,” They assured him. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, sorry,” Gerry covered his face with his hand. “It’s just... there are people willing to do anything to get their hands on these things because they’re powerful and expensive. You’ve got to be careful, immortal or not, you...”

Gerry’s voice broke before he went quiet, still hiding his face.

“Gerry?” Michael gingerly placed their arm around them.

“I think I need a cigarette,” His breathing was slow and shaky. One hand still over his face, he reached into one of his jacket pockets and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He just held it for awhile, so Michael took the lighter out of one of his pockets and got one ready for him. “Thanks.”

Gerry lifted his head, but Michael turned away and pulled their arms off of him so he wouldn’t feel uncomfortable.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to freak out on you,” Gerry took a drag from his cigarette.

“Don’t apologize. You do know you can talk to me, if you ever need to, right?”

Gerry made a noncommittal sound.

“Gerry? You do know that don’t you?”

“You don’t have to say that,” He sighed.

“Do you think I don’t mean it?” 

Gerry turned his head to look at them, but then he immediately turned away.

“Fuck, I don’t know,” Gerry stood up suddenly and took a few steps away. “You’re just always gone, and... I respect you decision to try and find out who you are on your own, but... gods, I sound so stupid!”

“No, you don’t,” Michael walked over to him, and they thought about touching him, but they kept their hands by their side. “Please. Talk to me, I want to know how you feel.”

“It’s stupid,” Gerry went over to the table and put out the cigarette that he had barely smoked in the ashtray. “I feel like you don’t want to be around me most of the time, which wouldn’t make sense because you would just never talk to me again if that were true. Gods, I feel like a dick... I’m sorry, this isn’t your fault, I’m just overreacting.”

“No,” Of course Gerry would think Michael didn’t feel like seeing him. They had known it upset them, but for some reason they never came to that conclusion. They would have felt the same way in Gerry’s position. “It is my fault. I’m sorry. I didn’t think...”

“Gods, no, it isn’t,” Gerry said quickly. “I swear you’re not the problem, I’m just being emotional right now.”

“Please, don’t try and blame yourself, I should’ve talked with you about this earlier,” Now was as good of a time to talk as any. Either they could let Gerry keep feeling like they didn’t care and keep blaming himself for it, or they could be honest. They weren’t entirely sure why they had been dreading the conversation to begin with, looking back on it. “I do want you around, it’s just that I’m afraid I might find out something really bad about myself and that you won’t want to be around me anymore. I’m afraid I might be an actual monster or something and that you’d hate me. I can literally turn my fingers into knives, but I can’t turn them back at will and I’m worried I might have been made to be destructive. There are just a thousand things that could go wrong and I’m afraid I might lose you somehow.”

Michael had been pacing as they talked, looking at their feet instead of Gerry. The words had been so hard to form at first, but once they started talking they practically fell out of their mouth. 

“I’m not going to leave you,” Gerry’s voice was gentle as he approached Michael. “I know that might be hard to believe, but I won’t. You know that no one in the MAGNUS crew is exactly a saint, either, right? We’ve all done shitty stuff when Elias was in charge and some of us don’t even regret it all that much.”

“That’s different,” Michael said. “You had no choice.”

“Yeah, and you don’t remember doing anything bad. You may not have even done anything bad in the first place. You’re showing remorse for something you may or may not have been responsible for. I think that’s a pretty good sign that you’re not a monster, and even if you were responsible for Esmentiaras, you’re an entirely different person than you used to be. Furthermore, if you were responsible for Esmentiaras, you’ve still destroyed fewer planets than I have. It’d be kind of hypocritical of me if I left you for that.”

“But you didn’t want to do any of that, and I’m not just worried that I’m responsible for Esmentiaras, I’m worried I may have done other things, too, I...” 

Gerry took Michael’s hand and squeezed it softly. They stopped to look at him.

“No, sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt. You can keep talking, and I’ll listen. Just don’t be afraid that I’m going to leave you, because I won’t.”

And now Michael was crying. Since they were quite a bit taller than Gerry, he had to pull them down a bit to pull them into a proper hug. They rested their head on his shoulder for awhile, and Gerry ran his fingers soothingly through their hair. He didn’t shush them, he simply let them cry.

“I’m glad you told me about this,” He said after Michael had calmed down somewhat. “I don’t know what I’ll have to do to reassure you that I’m not going anywhere, but I’ll do it. I mean, I’ll still give you your space, but I’ll be here if you need me.”

“That’s not fair to you,” Michael said. “You already told me you didn’t like that I was away all the time.”

“No, it’s fine, I’m just being kinda clingy right now.”

“No, you’re not, your emotions are completely justified. Why do you keep acting like they aren’t?”

Gerry went quiet, then he cleared his throat.

“I guess... maybe it’s my turn to talk to you about something?” Gerry didn’t sound too sure of himself. Michael pulled away only so that they could look Gerry in the eyes.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“No, no...” Gerry pressed his lips together and he couldn’t keep eye contact. “I want to.”

Michael waited, their face now stained with tears. The glow of the patterns on their skin turned dull, and it saddened Gerry to see. He took them by the hand and pressed a kiss to their knuckles, then took a deep breath and thought about what to say before releasing it.

“A long time ago, before we met, I found the Eye of Odin. It’s a glass eye, basically, and it whoever wears it obtains great knowledge, but you actually have to take your own eye out and replace it for it to work,” Gerry explained. “Anyways, I got it, and apparently there’s this duo of immortals who are also artifact hunters. I’d never heard of them before and I don’t think I ever caught their names, but they were pretty pissed that I’d gotten it before them and that I wasn’t willing to give them any information. Apparently it was one of the few artifacts on Trianum and they hadn’t been able to get their hands on a starship for literal centuries, so they couldn’t exactly go anywhere else. Anyways, they shot me and we’re gonna bury me but... I... woke up, you know? And they decided that having me around might be useful. They tried to get information from me about other artifacts on Trianum, but I didn’t know anything, so they just... decided to try and see if they could find a way to kill an immortal. I don’t... I don’t want to go into detail... but, uh, yeah... that went on for a couple of years. Then they gave up and left, so I was alone in some old shack of theirs for I don’t know how long. When I didn’t check in for awhile, the MAGNUS crew started looking for me. Gertrude’s pretty good at finding us when we’re lost, so it only took a couple months, but I was gone for, like, thirty years.”

Michael stared at him in mute horror. Gerry had never used the word torture to describe what happened to him, but he didn’t have to. 

“Gerry...” Michael breathed. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be, I’d honestly been dealing with it fine, I just... sort of freaked out because I was worried something similar could’ve happened to you with the ring, and I guess I got over emotional.”

“You aren’t being over emotional or clingy or anything like that, so stop saying that,” Michael felt like something had torn from their throat to their chest, and their throat felt raw when they spoke. “Stop acting like your emotions don’t matter, or that they matter less than other people’s.”

“Michael, I mean this in the least self-deprecating way I possibly can. You have more important stuff to worry about than—“

“That isn’t true!” Michael lowered their voice immediately. They hadn’t meant to shout. “You’re important to me.”

“I know,” Gerry smiled at them. “I know that, but sometimes you can’t handle everyone else’s baggage when you’ve got your own you have to worry about, you know?”

“I know.”

“I really am okay with you doing stuff on your own. This really is a personal matter, I get it. I just really do miss you and sometimes it gets to be...”

“I know,” Michael hugged him, slowly so that he could see what they were doing and pull away if they needed to. “But I want to be there for you, too. I think that maybe we should talk to each other and visit more often. I also want you to be able to rely on me if you need to. I promise I can handle my own problems and support you through yours at the same time.”

“I totally agree with what you’re saying, but you have to let me be there for you in return.”

“Okay.”

“Good,” Gerry sighed into the crook of Michael’s neck. “I honestly feel a lot better off that conversation.”

“Me, too.”

The load of anxiety that had been weight Michael down on a daily basis definitely felt a little lighter, and at the moment they felt good.

“We are... healthy relationshipping, good for us,” Gerry sounded genuinely proud, and Michael suddenly felt even lighter. Hearing Gerry address what they had as a relationship kind of made them feel giddy for some reason. They had hardly ever discussed what they had to that extent, which was evidentially something they should do. “That was supposed to make you laugh.”

Gerry almost sounded whiny as he started to sway back and forth, moving Michael with him. 

“I’m sorry, I just didn’t think it was very funny,” Michael made sure Gerry heard from their voice that they were teasing him.

“You’re rude,” Gerry scoffed. “Can I kiss you?”

“I thought I was rude?” Michael asked. 

“I’m willing to forgive you for it.”

Michael rolled their eyes and kissed him, and Gerry kissed Michael in the same way he always did. This was one of times where he liked to go slow and his mouth hardly ever stayed in one place. Michael had to lean forward so that Gerry didn’t have to stand on his toes the whole time, but of course they ended up moving to the couch again. 

“You should stay with me for awhile,” Michael told Gerry as his mouth was occupied in other places. “We don’t have to set a time limit or anything, we can just both take a holiday.”

“A holiday? What do you want to do?” 

“What we’re doing right now is definitely fine for now.”

Gerry laughed, and Michael could feel the vibrations of it from where their chests touched. It made Michael feel warm and a rush of something intense and sweet. They wrapped all of their limbs around Gerry in an impossible attempt to pull him closer. When Gerry asked Michael what they were doing, they gave into the desire that they had to kiss him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made up some artifacts that are just references to literature, so yeah.  
> I wasn’t expecting to fall deeply in love with Michael when I first heard about them in TMA, but then I heard them speak and I was like, “Is anyone gonna project onto that?” and I didn’t even wait for an answer.  
> Also, I listen to Family Business a lot because I think Gerry and Jon’s interactions are kind of funny for some reason because Jon is awkward, Gerry is sarcastic, and they both sigh a lot. Every time Gerry’s death gets read out loud, though, something about it gets me.


	8. “I may have accidentally sort of adopted five cats.”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin meet Jon’s octokittens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m gonna be 100% honest you guys I forgot I made a whole-ass planet called Eden. I’ll add it to the list, though.   
> I made Eden a thing because I needed names for the cats and I was just looking up things in groups of four to name the babies and then I found four of the Archangels. There wasn’t a reason for Jon to name them all that, though, so I made the Archangels and band and Eden a planet. The Mechanisms have based planets and stuff off of religions before so I decided to do the same. This also brings up the question of whether or not the planets/people mentioned in the Mechanisms exist in this AU. The answer is yes, they do. (Except for the actual Mechanisms. Well, sort of, but that’s mentioned later in the story.)

It was good to be back on Gertrude. Basira had been at the ship’s entrance waiting outside the entrance of the ship pacing around when he had arrived, and she waved to him.

“Hello,” Martin smiled but didn’t really make eye contact. He didn’t talk much with Basira, even though they’d known each other for a long time. She was nice, Martin was just a little bit awkward. Basira, Daisy, Gerry and Melanie had all joined MAGNUS after he did, and for some reason that made them harder for Martin to talk to. He had been the new guy, so everyone but Jon had gone out of their way to talk to him. He had only become familiar with Jon because of Tim, Sasha and Georgie. Since he wasn’t very good at striking up conversation, he had never really gotten to know the others, which was a shame. 

“Hi, Martin.”

“What are you up to?” Something about the way he said it made Martin cringe. His voice had wavered for no reason, and he almost didn’t hear her reply because he was too busy kicking himself for it.

“Just taking walk on solid ground,” Basira said. “Well, I suppose the ship is sort of solid ground, but there’s usually nothing but space underneath it. I didn’t want to go too far, though, because I didn’t know when you’d get here.”

“Oh, well, you can, if you want. Walk further, I mean,” Martin gestured vaguely towards the city he came from.

“Nah, I’m good. I think we’re supposed to be heading to Titan to pick Tim up anyways,” Basira and Martin both had a moment in which they mutely insisted that the other go up the ramp first, but Basira won the battle of courtesy and Martin quickly entered the ship while softly mumbling his appreciation. He paused, though, when he saw an octokitten sprawled out at the top of the ramp, sleeping peacefully.

“Who is this?” Martin asked as Basira came up behind him.

“That’s Jon’s octocat,” Basira sighed. “It loves sleeping in places where it knows it’s going to be in the way. Like at the top of the ramp, or in the middle of the hallway, or in front of the door.”

“Maybe I should take it to him?” Martin had already picked the octokitten up before Basira made a move to stop him, but then she stopped and looked surprised.

“Well, I guess it’s fine, then,” She shrugged, and the octokitten was still sleeping in Martin’s arms as he held it like a baby. “I thought it might try to bite you or something.”

“Oh, well... er, thank you? For trying,” Martin tried to focus his attention on the octokitten. 

“Sure,” Basira had clearly begun feeling awkward, too. It made Martin feel kind of bad. People had interpreted his nervousness as disinterest before, and he really would’ve liked to talk with her. He smiled in hopes that it would reassure her, and she offered her own in return, although it was much brighter than his was.

Martin headed in the direction of the library, thinking about how he could’ve handled his conversation with Basira better while the now half-awake octokitten began to purr in his arms. Martin always felt nervous going into the library for any reason at all. Despite the fact that he brought tea to Jon quite often, provided that they were both on board at the same time, he was always afraid he’d get rejected. Jon’s very standoffish and almost rude behavior towards him when they first met hadn’t really helped that feeling. Jon had gotten nicer, though, and he always thanked Martin for the tea. Even though he used to groan a bit about Martin coming in all the time while he was working, Jon never told him he wasn’t welcome. Martin supposed it was the fact that he was absolutely smitten with Jon that kept encouraging him to come back.

Tim literally almost screamed when he found out Martin had feelings for Jon. Martin thought that might have had something to do with the fact that they were having a casual... thing... for awhile, but Tim just thought it was “ridiculous that someone as sweet and lovely as Martin would ever fall for Jon.”

Tim didn’t hate Jon—he adored Jon, in fact, and he was probably over exaggerating a little in his implications about him—but he had said Jon’s name as though it as an own insult. Martin had insisted that Jon was also sweet and lovely, and Tim had shouted, “Who are you talking about?”

After having his crisis, Tim insisted the two get together. Martin thought that Tim would just end up telling Jon about Martin’s feelings for himself because he constantly talked about how tired he was watching him pine and that they needed to get together. He said he would leave a bad review if their romance was a movie or a TV show due to how long it was taking to develop. Martin always said that Tim would really be let down when he finds out that Jon didn’t return his feelings. Tim would tell Martin he was wrong and go into a rant about what a catch Martin is. While Tim was very sweet to do so, he couldn’t speak for Jon. 

Martin tried to listen in before knocking on the door to the library. Jon sometimes did audio recordings of things, and Martin wanted to do his best not to interrupt them. Jon kept several copies of any record he made, including physical, digital, and audio copies. He said he wanted to be prepared for any situation, but Jon probably just liked having extra work to keep himself busy. When Martin couldn’t hear anything inside the library, he knocked on the door.

“Come in,” Good, Jon didn’t sound irritated. He actually never sounded irritated when Martin knocked, except for the first few times he did it. Martin wasn’t sure why he was always worried that he would be.

Martin slid open the door.

“Hi, Jon,” Jon was sitting at a large desk on the right side of the library that he was pretty sure used to be Elias’s. He walked towards it. “Sorry, I don’t actually have any tea right now, but I do have your octokitten. It was sleeping at the top of the ramp and I didn’t want anyone to accidentally trip over it.”

“Oh, that’s fine,” Jon had been looking at Martin since he entered. His hair had gotten a lot longer in the past few years. Martin handed him the octokitten, and Jon placed it in his lap. “Thank you, Martin. How did things go?”

“What do you mean?”

“On Hamelin.”

“Oh!” Right. Why wasn’t that obvious? “Right, it went... well. I found a cure for the Samsa Flu, which isn’t actually a flu. It was actually a mutagen that somehow got into tap water and it was turning people into giant bugs, but it was contained to the city of Samsa in the country of Vermin, which is where it got it’s name. If you ask me, I think the government of Vermin put the mutagen in the water to see what might happen, but they claim there was an accident at a laboratory in that city but the details were apparently classified... sorry, I’m rambling aren’t I?”

“No, please,” Jon assured him. “Go on. I turned on the recorder when you started talking, I hope you don’t mind, I would just like to keep a record of what happened.”

“No, no! It’s fine,” Jon had a habit of doing that, but he never recorded people in secret. Or maybe he did and he was just really good at it. “Well, I found a cure. I mean, I made something that would cause the mutation to be reversed. It only took me fourteen cents to make a single dose of it, so I sold it for fifteen cents per dose. Of course, people who could’ve been making a lot more money off selling my cure for a ridiculously expensive amount of money shamed me for doing so. That didn’t even make any sense because if they made the cure super expensive, then only wealthy people would be able to afford it and unsurprisingly, wealthy people weren’t getting the Samsa Flu. That’s another reason I think it all wasn’t an accident, because everyone gets their water from the same place in that city. Anyways, I got arrested for not having a medical license, but I got out.”

“Right, well,” Jon clicked the tape recorder off. It was as old as everyone else on the ship, and it had also been modified. Sasha made it to where the recordings would be sent directly to Jon’s computer, since he was so attached to the thing and absolutely distraught by the fact that they couldn’t find cassette tapes anywhere anymore. “I may ask you some questions about everything later, but—“

“Ow!” Martin could’ve sworn he’d been stabbed in the ankle by a bunch of needles, but it was, in fact, another octokitten on the ground biting him.

“I’m so sorry,” Jon took the octokitten that had been sleeping in his lap and put it on his desk so he could pry the other one off of Martin. It was no longer biting him, but it’s tentacles were wrapped tightly around his leg. For a moment, Martin thought it would refuse to let go, but when Jon grabbed it by the scruff of it’s neck it came with him rather willingly. “Michael, we’ve talked about this, you’re not allowed to bite people.”

Martin wasn’t sure what was more amusing about this situation. The fact that Jon had clearly had conversations with this octokitten before, the look of genuine remorse on the octokitten’s face, or the fact that it’s name was Michael.

“You named it Michael?” Martin asked, a little reluctant to interrupt Jon’s scolding.

“It wasn’t named after Gerry’s joyfriend or after Tim’s boyfriend, I named all the octokittens after a band,” Jon seemed a bit defensive. Clearly he had been bothered about this before.

“Wait, joyfriend? Are Gerry and Michael dating now? Officially?”

“Yes,” Jon put the other octokitten on his desk. 

“Are they both still on Mysary?” 

“No, we picked up Gerry a few years ago. Michael’s doing some stuff on their own. Tim is still on Titan, though.”

“Oh, yeah, he’s kept me updated on what’s been happening with him and Mike. I didn’t know about Gerry, though. So, may I ask what happened with all the, uh... octokittens?”

“Well...” Jon went back to his chair and was promptly pounced by Michael the octokitten, who started to bite his hand. Jon didn’t seem to mind and pulled the sleeping one into his lap as well. “I may have accidentally sort of adopted five cats. Well, octocats. When we went to Mysary to pick up Gerry I found a stray octocat that followed me back to Gertrude, and I absolutely could not leave her after that. Apparently she was pregnant, which I thought I would’ve found out at two months later, but it actually took her nine months before she gave birth. Also, the average lifespan of an octocat is eighty years, which I didn’t expect either. I’d never even seen an octocat before then, and now I have five.”

“You said you named them after a band?” 

“Yes, they’re a band from Eden called the Archangels. They’re all dead now, but their names were Michael, Uriel, Gabriel and Raphael. I had named their mother Angel, so their names just made sense.”

“Who’s the sleeping one?” 

“Raphael. Angel is probably roaming around the library somewhere, but it might be awhile before you see the other two kittens. Gabriel is very skittish and Uriel has a lot of energy, so she likes to run around a lot,” The entire time Jon talked, Michael was still gnawing on his hand, but Jon didn’t even flinch.

“Are they all black with yellow eyes?” Martin only asked that because Michael and Raphael were black with yellow eyes, and if they weren’t behaving so differently he would be able to tell them apart.

“Yes. Daisy used to think I had only one octokitten and she was very shocked when she saw two of them sitting in the same room together, but there are five of them and they all look the same.”

Michael began to meow, soft and high pitched as though it was crying.

“Yes, I know,” Jon stroked the cat as though he was trying to soothe it. “He gets very upset because he can’t kill me by biting my hand.”

Martin smiled, which unintentionally turned into him giggling. 

“What?” Jon looked genuinely confused, and Martin had to stifle more of his laughter.

“I’m sorry, it’s just... nice. Seeing you with them,” Martin hoped that wasn’t too awkward for him to say. Jon went silent for a moment.

“I’m sort of worried...” He said slowly, almost cautiously. “Because I haven’t felt attached to anything mortal in a very long time.”

“Oh.” 

Martin didn’t know what to say. He really hadn’t expected Jon to open up to him about that.

“I know it’s a long way away, but I don’t like to think about it... and it makes happy moments sort of bittersweet.”

“I understand,” Martin said softly. Then he had a thought. He had never told anyone that Elias taught him to mechanize before. It just never really came up, and he wasn’t sure how anyone would take it. Granted, it had been a long time since he attempted it, but he still remembered how to do it. He even had the procedure written down in his office somewhere. 

“I can...” Martin suddenly felt that he wanted to at least tell Jon about it. It wasn’t like he was actively trying to keep it a secret, but he was worried that it might upset everyone. Then again, maybe Elias already told everyone. “You know I know how to mechanize things, right? I mean, did Elias ever tell you?”

“No,” Jon just stared at him. “No, he didn’t say anything...”

Alright then.

Martin didn’t know what to say now.

“Are you... offering to mechanize my octocats?” Jon asked him rather slowly.

“If you want, I can’t try,” Martin said quickly. “I would practice beforehand, since it’s been a really long time since I did it last, but...”

Jon was still staring at him.

“I... don’t know,” Jon said finally. “I might think about it, but... thank you, Martin.”

Jon smiled. It was soft, sincere, sweet... oh good gods, Martin could literally feel the redness in his face.

“Oh, of course... no problem...” Martin stammered. How very smooth of him. “Do you want tea?”

Jon chuckled, and Martin was surprised he didn’t collapse on the floor and die. He kind of wished he would have.

“That would be nice, Martin. Thank you.”

“Right, I’ll go and get it, then,” Martin quickly made for the exit, stumbling over his feet as he did, but he managed to keep himself from falling. He just hoped Jon didn’t notice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can project onto Martin a little bit. As a treat. (Being friendly with your friend’s friends but not friends with your friend’s friends. Also, I’m awkward.)  
> This user is afraid they are writing Jon out of character.   
> Martin: Aw it’s nice seeing you with octokittens  
> Jon: Have I ever told you about my fear of death?


	9. “I hope you know that my name is actually _______.”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daisy talks about how she and Basira died for the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE READ!  
> Although their deaths aren’t described in detail, I just wanted to warn you guys that they could potentially be disturbing to read. Stay safe, guys! <3  
> Also, I mention some Season 3/4 Spoilers in the notes at the end, just so you know.

“Basira... I hope you know...” Daisy was breathing heavily. Even now—beaten, blindfolded, probably minutes away from getting killed—she couldn’t tell Basira how she really felt. “That my name is actually Alice.”

That didn’t really mean anything, but Daisy had panicked.

“Yeah, I know,” Basira’s voice came from the other side of the room. “You told me when we first met.”

“Oh... I don’t remember...”

“You said I’d make a good pilot, too,” Basira reminded her. She had told them they said so before, but Daisy didn’t remember. “And you asked me to go into space with you.”

“I was right. You are a good pilot... Wish I hadn’t asked you to come with me, though. Then you wouldn’t be in this mess,” Daisy leaned her head back and it collided with the concrete wall behind her. Basira was going to die, and if was all their fault. “I’m so sorry, Basira.”

“I’m not,” Basira’s answer was immediate. “I would’ve just been living the same life I had been living before we met if you hadn’t offered to take me with you.”

“Exactly. You would have lived...”

“You’re not listening to what I’m saying. I would rather live a short and happy life than a long and miserable one. I hated my old life. I had nothing and no one, but then I had you. Worse things could’ve come from me following a stranger into space, but I don’t regret anything.”

“Basira...” Daisy didn’t know her voice could sound as soft as it did.

The sound of a door opening and slamming shut seemed to bleed into reality when Daisy woke up. 

She didn’t sleep often because of the vivid nightmares she had, but she never let anyone else know that. Not even Basira, who was sleeping next to her. Alive. Not that dying was an option for either of them anymore. 

Daisy put an arm around her, making sure that her hands didn’t touch any part of Basira’s bare skin. The metal was often cold, and even though Basira never complained she still didn’t want to wake her. Their eyes followed the lines where her metal throat and jaw met her skin. She was never sure if it pained her or relieved her to look at the part of Basira that had been mechanized. 

She would never have to worry about Basira dying again, and yet... after a few thousand years people begin to regret their lack of mortality. Daisy was not one of these people, but she wondered if Basira was.

Daisy doubted she could go back to sleep now. They pressed a kiss to Basira’s forehead and got out of bed as slowly as they could so that she wouldn’t be woken by the shifting of the mattress.

The hallways were quiet, as they usually were, but Daisy ran into no one as she walked to the kitchen. She figured that it was possible for the rest of the crew to be asleep at the same time, even though that rarely ever happened. 

Well, everyone but, apparently, since he was sitting at the table in the kitchen with a mug in his hand. He looked like shit. Jon always looked tired and stressed over something, but he looked horrible.

“Hello,” Daisy said as she entered the room. He must’ve seen her out of the corner of his eye, but he only turned to them after they had spoken. 

“Hi,” He sounded like someone had a hand clamped around his throat. 

“Are you... doing okay?” Daisy dared to ask him.

“I’m fine,” He answered quite predictably, despite himself. Well, Jon was an adult. Daisy didn’t need to tell him to go see Martin if he was feeling sick.

“Right.”

“Did you want some tea?” Jon asked her.

“I think I’m good,” Daisy hadn’t been sure if she was coming to the kitchen for coffee to wake her up or for tea to soothe her, but now she didn’t really feel like having either. She felt awake enough.

“Alright, then,” Jon nearly choked, then took a long sip from his mug. Daisy decided to sit at the other end of the table, drumming their fingers on it as they did. They hadn’t checked what time it was, but she probably hadn’t been asleep for very long. She never did. If it was an option, she might’ve considered therapy, but no one on the ship was a psychologist that she knew of, and she wasn’t sure how the crew would feel about taking her to the same planet for routine appointments. 

Actually, they might be okay with it. She would just feel awkward asking. Talking to someone might’ve done her good, but she dreaded doing that. She didn’t want Basira to worry about her, and she couldn’t even fathom how that conversation might go with anyone else on the crew. 

Maybe she just needed to say it out loud and get it off her chest. She turned to Jon as she thought that. 

“Jon...” She asked, and he made a noise when he turned his head like it hurt him to do so. “Do you think I could use your tape recorder for something.”

“Sure,” Jon winced. “What for?”

“Just something I need to get off my chest,” Daisy shrugged. Jon was looking in her general direction, blinking slowly, and Daisy was under the impression he wanted more information. “It’s about my death.”

“Right,” Jon’s eyes opened a little wider for a second, then he rubbed his face with the hand bot holding his mug. He placed said mug down on the table and stood. “Uh... lemme take you to it.”

Jon shuffled off into the direction of the library, and Daisy followed him. He dropped his glasses once, and he stared at them for a moment before Daisy picked them up for him. He thanked her, then put them on his face instead of his shirt this time. Daisy had always thought it was strange that—even with mechanical eyes—Jon wore glasses. Maybe it was an aesthetic thing, or maybe Elias still gave him the same vision he always had when he mechanized him. The trip to the library was longer than it should’ve, and Daisy really didn’t know what the fuck Jon was doing up at this point. They got there eventually, though, and Jon finally made his was over to his desk.

“There’s the tape recorder, you just press... uh, it’s... uh,” Jon picked up the tape recorder, almost dropped it, then pointed to the button she needed to press. “You don’t need to turn the computer on... it... it will go in there.”

“Thanks...” Daisy held her hands out to take the tape recorder, but Jon didn’t see her outstretched hands until after he placed the recorder back on the desk. He mumbled an apology and then picked it back up to hand it her.

“Do you want me to leave?” He asked her. Daisy assumed he would come back to the library to work, and he would probably walk all the way back to the kitchen to sit and wait for her. Then he’d walk all the way back here again. She didn’t think it would be right to put him through that.

“No. You can stay,” There were tables on the other end of the library, but Daisy offered him the chair at the desk. He collapsed into it, frightening the octocat that had been under the desk. It looked at Jon, then climbed into his lap. Jon put a hand on top of it, then closed his eyes.

Daisy didn’t know if he was sleeping or not, but Jon was so out of it she didn’t actually mind doing the recording in front of him. She leaned against the table and pressed the button to recorder.

“This is Daisy Tonner... I...” She didn’t know if she was supposed to say anything beforehand, since Jon did keep records of stories the crew told him, but she kept going anyways. “I’m talking about my nightmares, and how my, er... Basira and I... died.

Basira’s talked about how we met before, or at least she said she has, but the starship I won was from some prick named Trevor Herbert and his friend Julia Montauk. They called themselves the Hunters. I thought they were bounty hunters, but apparently they’re hunting for artifacts now. That’s what Gerry said, at least. I actually didn’t know they were immortal until recently, when he... well, you know what happened to Gerry.

I met Trevor Herbert outside of a bar on Trianum. He was drunk, telling everyone that would listen that he needed five hundred dollars. I have no idea what he wanted it for, but I happened to be a bounty hunter myself, so I had the money to give him. Except I didn’t actually want to. Maybe it was wrong, trying to take advantage of a drunk person’s poor ability to make decisions, but it wasn’t the worst thing I’d ever done. I still don’t feel all that bad about it.

I asked him what he’d be willing to give me in exchange for five hundred dollars, which I was beginning to think was his tab at the bar. He could hardly keep himself upright at this point. He told me that we could play a game, and if he won he’d get five hundred dollars. If I won, I got his starship.

He showed me his keys. Yeah, his starship had keys. I guess it’s because there’s wasn’t sentient like ours is, so they’ve gotta keep it locked and start it up in a different way. He also showed me this little device with buttons and a monitor on it. He told me that if I pressed a certain button, it would immediately show my the ship’s coordinates and how to get to it. Having a starship would to expand my options for bounty hunting tremendously, but the guy seemed suspicious. 

I figured the worst that could happen at the time was the guy didn’t actually own the starship. They were extremely expensive, even for small ones, and I doubted a guy who was begging for five hundred dollars on the street owned one. Still, if I beat him and he couldn’t pay me what he owed, I believed myself powerful enough to get it from him. Whether it was another starship or something of equal value.

So I accepted. We played Go Fish because he didn’t know how to play any other card game. He said he couldn’t remember the rules. I beat him the first time. He insisted we play three rounds in total, so we did another round and I beat him again. I told him there was no point in playing a third, but we did anyways. I won that round, too.

He just kind of slumped in his chair, so I took what he owed me and went to go find the starship. Julia Montauk caught up to me pretty quickly. I don’t know where she’d been during the exchange that had happened, but she was really pissed off. She demanded that I give back the keys and the tracker thing. I don’t know what it’s called.

I told her that she shouldn’t be mad at me. I played a fair game with her old man, and he lost. She told me he wasn’t her dad, then told me they were ‘business partners.’ She then elaborated and said their business was bounty hunting, and they weren’t afraid to kill people if money was involved. I told her I wasn’t afraid to either and that she could fuck off.

She came at me with a knife, but she must’ve been kinda drunk, too. She cut my shoulder, but the wound wasn’t very deep. I got away from her, but I decided not to go to the starship straight away. I didn’t know how to work one anyway. 

Those bastards want their keys back, though. They couldn’t go anywhere without them. They kept finding me, though. I don’t know how, they just did. It never occurred to me that they might’ve been tracking me somehow. I guess it was when Montauk stabbed me, she somehow... I have no idea what she might’ve done.

I met Basira a few months later. I still have no idea how I convinced her to run off with me. We really shouldn’t have done what we did. It was stupid. I’m surprised the Hunters never tampered with the ship, but I guess they couldn’t find it since I took their tracker thing. Basira didn’t know anything about flying at the time, though. She picked it up quickly, and there was a manual to show what the buttons did and all that, but... really, we should’ve crashed and died. The ship was pretty small and I guess easier to pilot, but I don’t know... I don’t know.

We did well for a couple of years. Basira got into the bounty hunting business with me. We didn’t make that much money during that span of time, but we grew closer. I fell in love with her. I was so in love with her that it was ridiculous. It still sort of is.

I was stupid, though. Reckless. I don’t think it had anything to do with my feelings for Basira, though. We went back to Manchester on Trianum, which is close to where we met. It was for a job, I don’t even remember the details now.  
I didn’t think that... yeah. I didn’t think, that was the problem. It never occurred to me that the Hunters would find us, but they did. They held us at gunpoint, took us to some shack in the woods.

They beat the shit out of me, but they didn’t hurt Basira. Not at first. They left us in that shack by ourselves for awhile, tied up and blindfolded on opposite sides of the room. I wanted to tell Basira how I felt, but I didn’t think that was right. She was in that mess because of me, so I told her I was sorry. Then she told me that she didn’t regret anything.

I don’t think they knew how much Basira meant to me, otherwise they might’ve drawn out her death a bit. Maybe they’d have made me watch. They killed her as soon as they came in. They stuck a knife... I found out later they... they stuck a knife into her throat sort of vertically, and they cut upwards all the way to her chin. I don’t know how long it took for her to die... I think I screamed.

They didn’t even ask for the keys to the ship. I thought they must’ve gotten them back, but maybe they lost their ship again at some point. Gerry said they were still stuck on Trianum.

Well, they said something about how thieves used to be punished by having their hands cut off. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t try to defend myself and say I wasn’t a thief. There wasn’t any point...

But, yeah. They cut off my hands. I don’t know what they used, but it took forever. Part of me hoped I might die before they completely cut through, but it took longer than I thought it would have. They left, and I was alone for awhile before I died. 

You know the rest. Elias found us somehow. I don’t know how, he never said. I never asked. I didn’t trust him, though. 

When Basira and I saw each other again, she... she hugged me. I wasn’t expecting her... to do that.

Even after she told me she was in love with me, I still couldn’t believe it. I’ve never done anything to make me worthy of the love of someone like Basira. She’s thoughtful, intelligent, and she’s kind, but she doesn’t let people walk all over her. She’s beautiful... 

Part of me still believes I’m dead and that this is all a strange and elaborate punishment. That something is going to happen... 

Well, anyways... that’s... that’s it.”

Daisy turned the recorder off.

“Well,” She sighed. Jon was looking at her with hazy eyes. The octocat was sleeping against his chest. “There you have it. Another story for your collection.”

“Now I just need... Melanie, Martin, and Gerry’s,” He managed a very weak smile. “Maybe hearing it from Basira’s perspective would be good, too. Then I’ll have all the information I need to do... whatever you guys think I do with it.”

“What do you do with it?” Daisy asked. Everyone had thought Jon a little suspicious for collecting so much data about everybody, especially considering how much Elias favored him. People still told him about themselves anyways. There was something about Jon that made you want to tell him things, which put people on edge. Shit... she had just told him personal stuff without really thinking, hadn’t she? Oh, well. It wasn’t like it her love for Basira was some big secret. They were dating, after all.

“I don’t know... it’s just... something to do,” Jon closed his eyes. “A task that is familiar and never ending... and you have something to show for doing it. Like what Gerry does with artifacts. It makes me feel like I have a reason to exist for as long as I have. For as long as I will exist.”

“Do you like it? Being immortal?” It was hard for Daisy to answer that question herself. She had everything she could’ve wanted, and it would never end. Ever. That was the good part about immortality and still somehow the bad part.

“I...” Jon took a deep breath, almost cautious about the way he did it. “Suppose I do. I don’t fear death... so that’s nice.”

“It is nice,” Daisy looked at Jon. He somehow looked worse than he had a few minutes earlier. “I’m taking you to go see Martin. Come on.”

“I’m fine,” Jon apparently didn’t have the strength to sound annoyed.

“Martin’s be a better judge of that than you will,” Daisy thought about picking Jon up and carrying him, but she knew it would be uncomfortable for both of them. She motioned for him to stand, and he did. They placed one of their hands on his shoulder, careful not to grip it too hard as Daisy was often unaware of their own strength. “Come on.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to write Jon sick and sleepy just because.  
> Also, Daisy being very deeply and tenderly in love with Basira just absolutely sends me, like... when she talks about her while she’s in in the Buried... 👉👈


	10. “Please stop petting the test subjects.”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin tells Tim and Sasha about his life before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE READ!  
> Trigger warning for isolation and depression. It’s your general lonely stuff, but please be careful. There is a brief mention of transphobia (unaccepting parents) and drowning as well.

The cratfruit infestation on Mysary was getting a bit out of control. It was mainly impacting rural areas and not there pretty, pristine cities where the rich lived and the tourists were lied to. Lots of fields, forests and even neighborhoods were covered in cratfruit vines. 

If cratfruit was at all edible, then that might have been a good thing, but the large, gourd-like fruit was covered in spikes and it was poisonous to humans. Nothing but bugs could eat it, and the amount of bugs it often attracted became a problem all on it’s own.

Martin had been thinking about how he might be able to alter the genetics of cratfruit to make it so humans could eat it, and that’s why he had been growing it in the ship’s lab. He decided to show them to Tim and Sasha when they asked what he’d been working on lately. For some reason, the presence of spikes on the fruit made the two of them want to pet it by touching the gaps between spikes. Of course, they kept getting pricked anyways.

“Please stop petting the test subjects,” It sounded more like a question than a request, but both of them put their hands by their sides.

“There’s just something so irresistible about petting plants that can hurt you,” Tim was still staring at the fruit.

“You know, Martin, you never mentioned you knew anything about botany,” Sasha settled for stroking the much less dangerous leaves of the cratfruit vine.

“Oh... well, I guess it never came up,” Martin shrugged apologetically. “I studied it before... you know.”

“Come to think of it, we don’t know much about what you did before getting mechanized,” Tim glanced over at Martin. “I mean, I’m not asking you to tell us how you got mechanized because I realize that might bring up some bad memories for you, but if you’re comfortable talking about what you did before...”

“That’s fine, actually,” Martin felt his skin grow hot. No one knew anything about how Martin ended up here. No one had ever asked, so he never said anything. “I wouldn’t mind, especially since my life before isn’t all that interesting. I... I can tell you how I got mechanized.”

Sasha and Tim looked at him, slightly concerned by the looks of them. They didn’t say anything, so Martin felt that he should.

“Would you like to move into the kitchen? So that we can sit down? I can make us tea...” 

“Martin,” Tim was using his cool-dad-turned-serious-because-he’s-worried-about-someone-he-loves voice. “Are you sure you’re okay with talking about that?”

“Yeah, you look...” Sasha paused. “Uncomfortable.”

“It’s just that no one’s ever asked, and I’ve never really talked about it out loud, but I kind of want to. I think it might do me some good, I’m just sort of nervous.”

“That’s fine,” Tim said as Sasha nodded. “That’s totally fine and normal that you would feel nervous.”

“Yeah,” Sasha agreed. “And we’ll make you tea instead, if you like.”

Now they were the ones who seemed nervous.

“Are you guys okay?” Martin asked.

“We’re fine,” Sasha assured him. “We just want you to be okay.”

“Oh. Thanks,” Martin’s smile was maybe a bit forced. “I’m sorry if I seem weird.”

“You’re fine!” Tim and Sasha’s word’s overlapped when they spoke.

“Well...” Martin exhaled slowly until all of their air had been forced out of his steel lungs. He could take deeper breaths and hold them longer than most people could. That would be sort of cool if it mattered at all. “Did you guys want to go to the kitchen?”

“We can go wherever you’re most comfortable,” Sasha’s smile was not forced at all, and it was actually very reassuring to Martin. He had chairs in the laboratory, but he sat on the floor of it anyways and Tim and Sasha followed. 

“I used to live on the planet Algernon in a small country called Corcoran,” Martin began. “I grew up in the rural town of Anil with my mum. My dad left us before I was old enough to remember what he looked like. I... I cared a lot about my mum, but she wasn’t always the greatest parent. There were times when she was really nice to me and I do have fond memories of her, but most of the time it was like she was looking for a reason to be mad at me.

She was really supportive when I told her I wanted to be a doctor, which only made me want to be one even more. She was proud of me. Like, actually proud of me. She said so herself, and she had never done that before...

I got accepted into a college in Devon, a city not too far from Anil. I stayed in a dorm for my first semester, but I quickly learned that I hated having a roommate, so I ended up renting a flat nearby. Then I came out to my mum as trans. I hadn’t wanted to do it, I thought maybe I’d just be able to magically start testosterone and go by Martin without my mum saying anything...

I figured that if I’d told her while I was still living with her, I’d have been kicked out. I did want to stall just a bit longer, but I couldn’t wait to go on testosterone any longer. She cut me off completely... she didn’t even try...

Well, anyways, I ended up dropping out of school. The weight of being abandoned and the cost of testosterone, rent and school supplies was just... overwhelming, you know? So I started working at a bar near my flat so that I could keep living there.

Working as a bartender wasn’t horrible. I actually sort of enjoyed it. You meet all kinds of people in that job, especially if you work in the city, and they tell you all sorts of stories without hesitation. 

I met Peter Lukas through my job. I had heard stories about the Lukas family. A bunch of immortal hermits who were rich enough to live on a private planet. Some people said they held parties every few centuries, but no one could say they had been to one. I didn’t know Peter was a Lukas, and even if he told me his last name when we first met, I probably wouldn’t have made the connection. I thought they weren’t real people.

When Peter and I first met, he asked me what a “bright and handsome man” like myself was doing working on a Friday night. I hadn’t ever been hit on before, so I wasn’t really sure what to say. I wasn’t even sure if he was hitting on me or not, since it felt like something an old person might have said.

I don’t know how that started a conversation, but I ended up explaining my entire situation to him in, like, five minutes. I wasn’t drunk or anything, Peter just felt like... like he wouldn’t have anyone to reveal your secrets to, if that made sense? I was a little bit scared after I had admitted I was trans because I wasn’t sure how he’d react, but he was actually very sympathetic. He gave me a two hundred dollar tip after I served him a single shot of whiskey. I didn’t want to accept it at first, but he practically pleaded with me to take it. I remember how bizarre I thought that was, and he winked at me when he left. He hadn’t told me his first name that night, and I hadn’t told him mine, either.

That’s why he came back Monday night, or so he said. I didn’t work Saturday or Sunday night, and he told me was glad I’d come back because we hadn’t been properly introduced. He left me another two hundred dollar tip that night, and I hadn’t served him anything. 

He kept coming back. Sometimes he’d order something, sometimes he didn’t, but he always tipped me a ridiculous amount of money and wouldn’t accept my refusal of it. Maybe I should’ve been freaked out, but I was strangely charmed by him. He wasn’t creepy and he never made any passes at me. Outside of calling me handsome, he never really said anything else that indicated he was interested in me. He just became a regular who tipped a lot.

Then one night, out of the blue, he told me who he really was. A Lukas. I said something about owning a planet. I think maybe asked him what it was like, because he said he’d very much like to show me it someday. Then he proposed to me. I can’t remember his exact words, but he said that he didn’t like talking to people usually, but he enjoyed talking to me. He never really mentioned love, but he did mention that he could give me anything that I wanted in life.

He said he would respect my decision if I refused, but he’d be returning to his home planet soon and he hated the thought of never seeing me again. Then I thought about how I would probably barely scrape by without the tips he’d been giving me. That’s how it has been before. I had student debt and rent to pay, food to buy, and my damn landlord always insisted that I pay for repairs if the heating broke or something like that and I... 

I accepted. I was afraid, so I accepted. It wasn’t really his fault, though. As much as I want him to have orchestrated some plan to lure me in and take me while I was at my most vulnerable...

It wasn’t him... I just felt like I had no choice. 

Our wedding consisted solely of the Lukas family, whom I never saw again. 

Peter wasn’t violent or mean or anything, and he never pressured me into anything I didn’t want to do, but I hated it there. We lived in a cabin by the seaside, and nearly every day seemed bleak and gray. I can’t recall a time when the sky and ocean appeared blue. Sometimes Peter went out to sea and that was when it was the worst... when I was completely alone... I never had a consistent sleep schedule during that time. Sometimes I slept for a majority of the day and other times I would sleep for nearly a week. I was... I was depressed... but I was too scared to tell Peter. It wasn’t that I was scared he’d hurt me or refuse to let me go, I just... I guess I didn’t know what to say?

It comforted me knowing that I would die one day. I mean, I wasn’t actively hoping for death, but I knew I would go willingly if it ever came for me. Then I wouldn’t have to keep being there.

We did go on one trip away from the Lukas’s planet. Back to Algernon... and I was so overwhelmed by the number of people I thought I was going to faint. We left pretty quickly, and I felt sort of... relieved. It felt safe to be alone even though it made me feel awful.

Anyways, Peter must have noticed that I was acting stranger than usual when he returned from his trips to sea, so he invited me on his next one. There was obviously nothing worth seeing. He didn’t even do anything. He said he just liked to sail. 

I don’t remember exactly how it all happened, but I fell overboard. I was standing at the front of the ship. I think I was hoping for some sort of emotion. Excitement or fear or... anything. Then we went over a wave a bit higher than the rest. That was all it took. I don’t remember being underwater... it was like the second I broke the surface, I was awake.

I knew immediately that I was on land because I couldn’t feel myself being rocked by the ocean. Peter was there. He almost looked worried. Then... he explained to me that I had died, and that... he...

He called his old friend Elias, and he brought me back... he replaced my lungs... and made it so I wouldn’t ever have to worry about dying again.

He said he wanted to ask me about becoming immortal later in our relationship, but he hadn’t expected something like this to happen so he had to make the decision himself.

I was never in love with Peter Lukas. I must have liked him, but I don’t remember that because all I feel for him now is hatred.

He took the only thing that comforted me, and I hated him. I never said anything, though. He had Elias teach me everything he knew about medicine. Well, everything he was willing to teach me, anyways. That included mechanization.

I sort of liked Elias then. Peter wasn’t as talkative as he had been before we were married, but Elias talked to me. Being around someone new was good, but not too overwhelming.

He made me an offer after awhile. He said that he could get me out of here, and that I could work with him on his starship. Some of the work I did would be to repay my debt to him for getting him off the planet and away from the Lukas family, though. Apparently, he was risking a very valuable friendship by doing so.

I agreed, of course, and that’s how I got here. I haven’t heard from Peter Lukas since. I used to worry about him hunting me down for some reason, but I feel like my loss didn’t upset him too much. Sometimes I think he might have asked Elias to take me away himself.

Whatever happened after Elias took me away isn’t my business though. I guess I’m still legally married to Peter Lukas, but I don’t consider myself his husband. I want to say I hope he’s doing well, but I’m not sure if I’d be telling the truth.

So... that’s it. That’s how I got here.”

Martin hadn’t been looking at Tim or Sasha as he spoke. His eyes had been flickering around the room, but he mainly stared at the floor and ran his fingers along the grooves in the floor.

“Sorry... I think maybe I gave a little too much detail or—“

Tim and Sasha cut him off by rapidly repeating the word ‘no!’ a few times, then they both crawled to him.

“Don’t apologize,” Sasha said once she had settled herself next to him. “We’re glad you shared this with us.”

“It’s not really that big of a deal, though. I mean, people are here under worse circumstances. I guess mine could’ve been worse, and I kind of was responsible for...” Martin turned to Tim when he placed his hand on Martin’s shoulder.

“Martin,” Tim looked him straight in the eye. “You can’t do that. You can’t judge whether or not you’ve had a bad or traumatizing experience by comparing yours to someone else’s. You can’t go blaming yourself for what happened, either. You were scared, and you made a decision that you couldn’t have possibly predicted the outcome of. Your feelings about what happened to you matter.”

“Tim’s right,” Sasha put her arm around Martin. “You know, I think what you’re doing is you’re trying to put everyone else’s emotions first, and that’s sort of translated into you ignoring your own. You can’t let that happen.”

“You can’t let yourself burn out for the sake of others,” Tim agreed. “Your feelings matter, too. You matter.”

“Oh... okay, um... right, right...” Martin ran his hands through his hair. “Sorry, I just... I don’t... know... it might take me awhile? Before I can... develop that mindset...”

“That’s... understandable. We’ll always be here, though,” Sasha said. “Did you want some alone time, or...?”

“No...” Martin said after a moment. “I’d like you both to stay here.”

Tim and Sasha were both leaning on him now, their arms around him and their backs against the wall. If anyone other than Sasha, Tim and Georgie came into the lab, he might have worried people would come in and ask them what they were doing. Georgie would probably not ask and instead say she just wanted in. 

Martin had never had friends before. Tim had told him plenty of times that he should put himself first every now and again, but he wasn’t sure how. He was kind of terrified that he’d lose people if he did that. He wasn’t used to interacting with people quite yet, even after all these years, but he was pretty sure he was getting there.

“We love you Martin,” Tim told him.

“I love you guys, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Platonic friendship between Martin, Tim and Sasha. Platonic friendship between Martin, Tim and Sasha. Platonic friendship between Martin, Tim and Sasha. Platonic friendship betw  
> Also idk where I got the name cratfruit from But I called it that for a reason. Just imagine a circular, reddish-orange cactus that grows on vines like a pumpkin does.  
> Also am I the only one that tried to pet cacti? They’re like... forbidden to touch, but I still try. That’s how I show affection.


	11. “Please put me down it’s just a sprained ankle.”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon has no idea how to deal with his feelings for Martin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y’all remember how MEAN Jon was to Martin in season one? He’s like, “When I worked at the Magnus Institute I had a crush on my archival assistant so I wrote him a letter that just said, ‘Get out of the archives.’”  
> Alfred Grifter and his band are mentioned in this because the person who beta read this for me got Alfred Grifter in a “which avatar are you?” quiz and wanted him to be in here. She knows nothing about the Magnus Archives (or the Mechanisms) other than what I’ve told her. She and my other friend let me info dump about both things all the time. Anyways, Grifter’s Bone is the Mechanisms but not quite. The songs the Mechanisms wrote in our universe were written by Grifter’s Bone in this one and they are also immortal space pirates. I decided to make Jon hate them just because.

It was probably a good thing that some of the bigger pieces of furniture on the ship were nailed down. The MAGNUS crew preferred not to turn gravity off unless they had a reason—although they never did have a reason—since no one really liked having their stuff floating around all the time.

That meant that whenever the ship came to an abrupt stop, though, stuff and people would fly forwards. 

That hadn’t really been a problem before, but Basira decided to teach Melanie how to drive the ship. Then it was a problem. 

It could’ve been worse, but Jon was now lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling, knowing without even looking that every single one of the books had been knocked off their fucking bookshelves. He stayed there for awhile, sarcastically thanking whatever powerful force that influenced the universe allowed this to happen.

He didn’t know how long he’d been there, but he heard a knock at the door. He decided he’d better get to his feet.

“Come i— gods!” Apparently his right ankle had been injured. That was evident from the sudden intense pain he felt as soon as he put pressure on it, which caused him to fall to the ground again. Had it seriously not healed yet?

The door slid open quickly as Martin came inside, panicked by Jon crying out.

“Are you alright?” He hurried over to where he was sitting, and Jon felt thoroughly humiliated. “I wanted to make sure everyone was okay because we stopped so suddenly, and then I heard you—“

“I’m fine, Martin,” Jon finally looked over at the books scattered around the floor and winced.

“Can you stand?” 

Jon’s silence told Martin all he needed to know. At first, he thought Martin was going to help him stand, but then he picked him up. Rather easily, in fact. That made Jon feel something, a feeling similar to panic and embarrassment but not quite as bad.

“Please put me down, it’s just a sprained ankle.”

“I’m just going to put you in your chair,” Martin was using his no-nonsense voice, and Jon knew there was no point in saying anything else. His chair was only a few feet away anyways.

Martin’s awkward demeanor returned as soon as he helped Jon sit down.

“Can I, uh... help you with the books?” 

“That’s alright, I can get to that in a moment,” Jon pinched the bridge of his nose. He was actually kind of dreading having to put them back where they belonged. “Besides, I’m sure you’ve got your own mess to clean up in your lab.”

“Oh, no I don’t, actually. I don’t really keep things that can roll away or get knocked on the ground in the open. I’ve got a bunch of drawers, so...”

“I thought you wanted to check on the others?” 

“I already did, but if you rather I leave, I...”

It wasn’t that Jon didn’t want Martin’s help. Putting away books wasn’t a difficult task nor was it one that he obsessed over to the point of not wanting anyone else to assist him for fear they might ruin his own way of doing things. It just felt very, very weird being in Martin’s presence lately, and Jon refused to look into those feelings any further. To be honest, they intimidated him.

“I wouldn’t feel right having you help,” That was partially the truth. Jon would feel extremely not right if Martin helped, especially after what happen a few seconds ago.

“Well, the library is sort of everyone’s space. It’s everyone’s responsibility to make sure it’s organized, right?”

Right.

Jon couldn’t argue with that. Well, he couldn’t come up with anything to say so that he could argue with that. That made him smile for some reason, but only briefly.

“Right. Just give me a moment and I’ll help you...” Jon pressed his right foot firmly on the floor. Nope. He still wasn’t going to be able to stand.

“Oh, gods, I’m sorry, I never checked to see if it was dislocated or anything,” Martin looked like he was about to do something, but then he paused. “Are you alright with that? I mean, if it’s broken or dislocated and I set it back into place, it’ll heal faster.”

“Please, leave it,” Jon may have spoken a bit too firmly, and he immediately felt bad. Martin didn’t seem to react, though. “I’m sorry Martin, I’m just... frustrated right now...”

“Well, I’m here to help,” Martin assured him. “I mean, there are a lot of books, but I’m pretty sure we can handle it.”

Right. The books. Jon had actually forgotten about those. 

“But I can go get some help, if you want?” Martin offered.

That might be for the best.

“I think that’s a good idea. Thank you, Martin.”

“Oh... you’re welcome. I’ll go get them—“

“Are you alright in here?” Georgie slid the door open without knocking and walked into the room immediately. “Oh, hi Martin.”

“Hello...” Martin waved, then pressed his lips together. “Uh... we’re gonna put the books back up, would you like to help?”

“Sure thing!”

“Right, well, I’m gonna go and see if anyone else wants to help...” Martin took a few steps towards the door. “Do either of you need anything?”

“I’m good. Thanks, though.” Georgie smiled at Martin, and Jon just shook his head no. 

“Alright,” Martin left and carefully slid the door closed behind him. 

“Melanie wanted to let you know she’s sorry for any damage she may have caused while driving,” Georgie walked over to Jon’s desk and sat on it. Jon scoffed in disbelief. “Okay, she didn’t actually ask me to say that, but I’m apologizing for her.”

“Apology accepted, I suppose,” Jon sighed. Something must have been off, because Georgie looked at him funny.

“What’s wrong?” 

“I... have no idea...” Really, how was he supposed to explain this out loud without sounding ridiculous? It wasn’t like he hadn’t ever had feelings for someone before and... gods, there it was. He’d done a really good job ignoring that until just now. He shifted uncomfortably in chair, pressing his foot on the ground again. The pain wasn’t awful, but he was going to give it a little while longer.

“Okay...” Georgie was clearly expecting more from him, despite what he just said. “You just look kinda shaken up. Was it because we stopped all of a sudden? Are you hurt?”

“Yes, I am injured... but...”

“Are you hurt emotionally?” 

“I was going to say that I’m healing right now.”

“But you are alright emotionally, right?”

“Yes... sort of... it’s complicated...” Jon did not like this at all.

“What do you mean?” Georgie actually seemed really worried, and even though explaining to her his situation would ease those worries, it would be unbearable for him. He shouldn’t have said anything. As it turned out, Jon didn’t need to say anything, because Georgie figured it out on her own.

“You have a crush on someone!” She probably didn’t mean to be so loud, since she immediately covered her hand over mouth, but the door was practically thrown open.

“You WHAT?” Oh, great. Tim had heard her.

“Sorry,” Georgie whispered.

“Good for you, Jon!” Tim walked over to his desk. “Like, I mean that sincerely!”

“No...” Jon covered his face with his hands.

“No?” Tim and Georgie asked in unison.

“I don’t know...” 

“May I ask who it is?” Georgie gave him a few seconds to just breathe and hide his face before she asked.

“I think I already know,” Tim  
whispered it, even though Jon was very close and could obviously hear him.

“Me, too, I just wanted to ask,” Georgie also whispered it.

“Please stop it.” Jon didn’t look at them.

“Hey guys!” Jon could hear Sasha’s voice as she entered the room.

“What’s wrong?” Martin was there, too. Great.

“Oh, we’re just affectionately pestering Jon,” Tim casually put his hands on Jon’s shoulders. He still refused to move his own hands away from his face. “You know how fun he is to bother.”

“Leave him alone, Tim,” Martin was crossing his arms. Jon couldn’t see it, but he knew he was. “Do you think you can stand now, Jon?”

Jon finally looked up at them. Yep, he was still crossing his arms.

“Yes, I... I think so...” 

“You can lean on me if you need to.”

Oh my gods. Oh my fucking gods. 

“I’ll be fine, thank you,” Jon got to his feet rather slowly. Oh, he was definitely not going to be able to stand on this foot for very long. Why did small injuries always take forever to heal? Yes, it probably would’ve taken a mortal person a few weeks to recover from the same injury he had, but Jon still felt unfairly inconvenienced.

“Are you sure you don’t wanna lean on Martin?” Tim was grinning, but Martin shushed him. “I was just asking.”

“I knew it,” Jon heard Georgie talking to Tim. He responded, but Tim actually kept his voice down this time and Jon sort of tuned it out anyways.

“You know, Jon,” Tim was plotting something. Everyone could tell by his voice. “Since you’re injured and you’re also too short to reach the top shelf without a ladder—no disrespect, I just know you can’t—you and Martin should fix the same shelf together!”

“Makes sense to me!” Georgie agreed.

“Oh, it makes sense to me, too!” Sasha couldn’t have known what was going on entirely, but Jon blamed her for what was happening just as much as he blamed Tim and Georgie. What were they, nine years old? Jon decided then that he hated them.

“I guess?” Martin was reluctant to agree. “We need to sort them before we stack them, though.”

“Go for it, then!” Georgie started back down one of the aisles away from Jon and Martin, and Tim and Sasha followed. “We’ll be over here!”

Then they were gone. Yep. Jon definitely hated them.

“Well, that was... weird... wasn’t it?” Martin adjusted his sleeves even though they didn’t need to be adjusted. “Should we get started, then?”

“Yes,” Jon gingerly laid himself on the ground in sitting position and Martin joined him.

“Oh. I just realized. Where are the little ones?” That was what Martin called the octocats. Was he supposed to not have feelings for someone who would say something like that?

“When I heard Melanie was driving I put them in their crates for awhile, since they’re nailed down. If Melanie’s done, I’ll go let them—“

“Don’t worry about the Jon, we’ll let them out for you!” Tim called from behind the bookshelf.

“Were you guys listening to us?” Martin’s face flushed.

“We just happened to overhear,” Georgie said. “Anyways, Melanie’s probably done driving, so we’ll go let the octocats out! Wouldn’t want you to walk all that way if you’re injured, Jon!”

The three of them left the library in a hurry, and Martin was understandably baffled by their behavior.

“What’s gotten into them?” It was a rhetorical question, but Jon felt himself grow tense when Martin asked it. They worked in silence, reading the authors of books to themselves and arranging them alphabetically. 

“How’s your ankle doing?” Martin broke the silence after awhile.

“It’s doing better, thank you.”

They were quiet again. The others still hadn’t returned.

“I don’t think they’re coming back,” Jon finally said after thinking about doing so for awhile.

“Well... I’m here, and I’ll help you get this done,” Of course Martin would say that.

“Thank you...”

“I don’t know if you’re feeling the same way, but...” Oh, gods, that choice of words nearly made Jon’s heart stop. “I don’t want to endure an awkward silence.”

“Neither do I.”

Martin looked relieved, like he thought Jon enjoyed awkward silences. Working through regular, calm silence was a different matter entirely, but he didn’t feel like enduring this, either.

“Do you mind talking about something?” Martin asked. “You never really told me about the Archangels, or why you hate Grifter’s Bone so much.”

Jon rolled his eyes at the mention of that stupid band, and that made Martin laugh.

“Gods... Grifter’s Bone. Where do I even begin?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tim, Sasha and Georgie just want good things for Jon.   
> Also Martin can DEFINITELY pick up Jon without even trying. I just realized that this is the second time (and it will happen again) where I have someone carry the person they are/will be romantically involved with in their arms because the other one is injured. Huh.  
> By the way Jon has zero clue Martin likes him and vice versa.


	12. “So what if I broke my arm I’m still doing it.”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Georgie is very important to Melanie, and Melanie is very important to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE READ!  
> Someone loses a limb in this chapter. It isn’t super graphic, but still.
> 
> Sarah Baldwin: queer polyamorous genderfluid person, she/her he/him  
> Daniel Rawlings: polysexual polyamorous genderfluid person, any and all pronouns

“What happened?” Georgie had grown used to the fact that Melanie did very reckless things that would get her injured. Well, almost used to it. It wasn’t as surprising as it had initially been to find her dead or dying, but no one likes seeing someone they love get injured. 

“Motherfucker... fucking took...” Melanie was breathing heavily and clutching her shoulder as Georgie knelt in front of her. Georgie had had no trouble finding Melanie, despite the fact that she was slumped in the back of an alleyway. Although she hadn’t told anyone what her business was on Hamelin, she had given Georgie an address to go to in case Melanie needed her for something.

It was a good thing she did, because all Melanie managed to do was send her a text that said, “help.” 

“Gonna fucking kill them...” Melanie insisted.

“Melanie, you’re not in a state to do that,” Georgie told her gently, as though Melanie didn’t already know.

“So what if I broke my arm? I’m still doing it,” Melanie expended most of her remaining energy by shouting the beginning of her sentence, but she barely slurred out the rest.

“You didn’t break your arm, Melanie, your arm is gone.”

“It’ll get better. Might as well say I broke it...”

Melanie was definitely going to die before she regenerated, given how much blood was on the ground. It didn’t look like it was too clean of a cut, either. Poor thing. Georgie stroked her hair soothingly.

“They took my fucking bracelet, Georgie,” Melanie actually whined. It was a bracelet that Georgie had made for Melanie a long time ago. It was literally a bracelet with plastic letter beads that spelled out “I love you,” with black and blue beads that matched Melanie’s hair to separate the words and fill the rest of the empty space. Melanie wore it all the time.

“Don’t worry about the bracelet,” Georgie was still petting Melanie’s hair as her eyelids started to flutter closed.

“I am worried about it. I want it back,” Melanie’s arm might’ve started regenerating at that point, but it was a slow process and there was no noticeable difference. If her arm had still been here, she’d have been able to hold it in place so that it just reconnected itself, but she was going to have to regenerate the whole arm without it. “They went in there.”

Melanie tried to make some sort of gesture towards the metal door they were sitting next to, but her head just rolled to the side.

“I’ll go get it for you,” Georgie kissed Melanie’s forehead and she groaned in response. She tried to open the door, and it was unsurprisingly locked. No problem. She kicked the door as hard as she could a few times until it was finally off of its hinges. 

“Very sexy of you...” Melanie mumbled. “Thank you...”

“I’ll be right back,” Georgie promised her.

“Be careful,” Melanie’s voice had gone so soft that it hurt Georgie’s heart to hear it. She would be alright, though. Georgie would see to that. 

The building she entered was obviously abandoned, given how dark and dusty it was. It must’ve been an old factory turned into a hideout, since there were a lot of factories and a lot of organized crime on Hamelin. What kind of people would just take a person’s arm off, though? Georgie supposed she would find out. 

“Hello?” Georgie figured there was no real danger in calling out to anybody. She was pretty hard to kill, since she had steel bones and all. If anyone wanted to go chopping her arm off, they would probably have a hard time doing it. “I’m not really here to fight or anything, I’d really just like my girlfriend’s bracelet back! So, if you could bring that back, that would be really nice! You can keep the arm, if you’d like. I mean, it’s probably not going to last very long, but you can still keep it until then!”

“What do you mean?” A voice asked, but Georgie couldn’t see the person speaking. It sounded like they were coming from above her. 

“Well, she’s going to regenerate, so the arm is going to sort off... I guess teleport back onto her body a bit at a time? It’s a weird process,” Again, no harm in explaining. Also no harm in saying they were immortal. 

“So that’s what happens!” The voice said excitedly. “Oh, would one of you turn the lights on,?” 

The lights hummed as they slowly lit up the room, and Georgie had to turn her head while looking up to find who had been speaking. There was a second floor in the building she was in—which she could now see was completely empty—that was only on one half of the building. Three people were up there. One of them had been turning on light switches while the other two held onto the railing and looked down at Georgie. One of them had pale white skin and no face, but they were waving quite enthusiastically.

“Hello!” It must have been the person without a face talking, since no one else’s mouth was moving. “Nice to meet you!”

“Hello?” Georgie waved awkwardly in return. “Do you have my girlfriend’s bracelet?”

“This one?” The sane person held something up that kind of looked like Melanie’s bracelet, but she couldn’t really see from where she was.

“Maybe?” She squinted her eyes, although she wasn’t sure why. That never helped her get a better view. 

“Oh, I’ll come down there and show you!” The person was stopped by a someone much shorter than they were.

“That might be a bad idea,” She suggested, but the other person didn’t seem to understand why she was hesitant.

“What’s the problem? They said we could keep the arm!” Before anyone could stop them, they person was skipping happily down the stairs to show Georgie the bracelet.

“Yep. That’s the bracelet,” Georgie nodded, but the person enclosed it in their fist as soon as Georgie confirmed it was what she was looking for.

“I’ll give it to you!” They said. “But I’d like to ask you a few questions!”

“Okay,” Georgie didn’t really feel like making this any more difficult or violent than it needed to be. The person seemed thrilled, even though they could express that they were by using their face.

“Wonderful!” They took Georgie’s hand—using the one that wasn’t holding the bracelet—and shook it. “I’m Nikola Orsinov! A pleasure to meet you! I use the pronouns she and her! Daniel says stating your pronouns is good because it helps normalize it so that trans people don’t feel uncomfortable or like they’re outing themselves when they do it!”

“Well, yeah, but I was talking about people doing that online,” The person who had turned the lights on sighed, but their smile indicated that they had done so fondly. “Actually, never mind.”

“Oh, so was that a good introduction, then?” Nikola turned to the two people on the balcony. They both gave her a thumbs up. “Oh good!”

Nikola turned back to Georgie.

“Well, I’m Georgie, and I use she/her pronouns, too,” Georgie noticed that Nikola never stopped moving. Even now, she was swaying to an unheard tune. It was charming, and Georgie had noticed Michael, Sasha, and Jon did the same thing sometimes. Then Georgie remembered why she was here. “Why’d you cut my girlfriend’s arm off?”

“Well,” Nikola folded her hands. “I’ve been wanting a human body for awhile, since I’m made entirely out of wood! I’m a clockwork figure, you see! But the thing is, it’s hard to get a human body without killing someone or digging up the dead, and we didn’t want to do that! Sarah heard of some process called mechanization before, and she figured that she could try and do the procedure but differently! She doesn’t really know how to do the regular procedure, but she figured we could just try and figure it out through trial and error! So we thought about where to get human body parts without killing people or taking them from dead people, and Daniel figured that immortal people’s limbs go back! So he put an ad out online so that everyone could see that he needed to meet an immortal to inquire about something! He said they’d be paid a thousand dollars upfront, which he got from being an artist! He makes really good waxworks! Anyways, someone responded to our ad, and then we asked to meet her in that alleyway! When she came, we gave her her money, but we sort of panicked! It’s hard to ask someone for their arm, even if it will grow back! So Sarah took an axe and chopped it off! We didn’t mean to take the bracelet, though!”

“Right,” Georgie nodded and grinned despite herself. 

“That one is Sarah, by the way. She is using she and her today, but some days she uses he and his,” Nikola pointed to the short person, then to the tall one. “And that’s Daniel! Ze uses all pronouns, and they said people can use whatever they like, but I like all of them!”

Sarah and Daniel were both smiling down at Nikola as they leaned against the railing. Okay, this was weirdly adorable.

“Nice to meet you two,” Georgie sort of meant it. Maybe if the circumstances had been different, she would have meant it completely. Clearly, these people were just bullshitting their way through whatever they were hoping to do. The two on the second floor obviously weren’t immortal, otherwise they’d have done the experiment themselves, and Georgie was fully convinced that they were going to die sometime very soon. They just gave off a chaotic and idiotic energy, which would undeniably lead to their demise. They both waved down to her.

“So! Questions!” Nikola waited until after Georgie finished introducing herself. “We have questions! So, her arm is going to regenerate, and then the other part of her arm will dissolve as it does that? Why doesn’t it do it the other way around? Like, why doesn’t her body dissolve and regenerate?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know. You’ll probably have to ask someone who knows more about mechanization.”

“Do you know anyone?” 

“Well...”

“Well? You do?” Nikola seemed very excited, and Georgie felt bad that she had gotten her hopes up. That wasn’t her intention. 

“He’s probably dead,” Georgie confessed. “He wasn’t a good person, and my friends and I really wanted to be rid of him. So we sort of... cut his body up and spread the pieces out on planets and throughout space, and then we put his mechanism in space away from a bunch of planets as well so that when he does regenerate he’ll still be dead.”

“That is amazing!” Nikola started spinning around the room, then began wondering aloud about how long the process would take and other things Georgie couldn’t hear.

“Why’d you kill him?” Sarah asked.

“He was a bad person, and he made us do a lot of bad things,” Georgie knew it sounded vague, but she felt she had already told these complete strangers enough.

“Oh! Oh!” Nikola jumped up and down as she thought of something, then raced back over to Georgie. “Here’s a question you might be able to answer! What is it like to die?”

“It’s... kind of like going to sleep, but you generally have a much more painful experience beforehand and you don’t feel well rested at all when you wake up,” Georgie wasn’t sure if that’s what it was actually like to die. Since they always came back, immortal people had probably never experienced actual death. 

“I have another one!” Nikola’s enthusiasm hadn’t faded in the slightest. “Do you know a Tim Stoker? He’s immortal, too! Well, I think he must be, because I’ve only ever met him twice, and our meetings were like... hundreds of years apart!”

“Yes, actually, I do know Tim. He’s part of my crew,” Tim had never mentioned a Nikola Orsinov before. Even though they’d only met twice, she knew who he was, and she’s strange enough to warrant a conversation about. At least, Georgie thought so.

“He’s the only immortal I ever met! Well, not counting clockwork figures! Or you, or that other person outside! He’s the reason I’m free, but I won’t tell you more than that because I don’t have to!” Nikola obviously wasn’t saying that to be rude. It sounded like she was happy about the fact that she had a choice on whether or not to tell her anything else. “If it weren’t for him, I would never have met Sarah and Daniel! They’re lovely! I asked them to teach me to be humanlike, but they told me I was fine how I was! They did teach me some human stuff, though! Like how long a human being lives on average! Ninety three years! Which is such a short amount of time...”

Nikola’s cheerfulness fell abruptly. 

“I’d take you to him, but he’s visiting his boyfriend on Titan right now,” Georgie told her, hoping that wouldn’t keep her sad.

“Oh, good for Tim!” Like a switch had been flipped, Nikola was ecstatic again.

“Good for Tim,” Daniel was much less enthusiastic, but sincere.

“Good for Tim,” Sarah agreed.

“Good for Tim!” Nikola clapped her hands excitedly. Georgie thought they might go around again, but they didn’t. “Please tell him that I’m doing very well, and that I said thank you! Also, tell him I made friends!”

“I will,” Georgie said. “As soon as we pick him up from Titan. Maybe he’ll come visit you.”

“Probably not, but in case he does we do live in this building!” 

“Oh...” Georgie looked at the door she had broken down. “I’m really sorry about your door.”

“It’s fine! We have the money to fix it! It was very impressive!” 

“Thank you.”

Georgie briefly wondered why they lived in abandoned factory if they had one thousand dollars to give to Melanie and enough money to fix their iron door, but maybe they liked living there. It would’ve been rude to ask anyways.

“Oh, your bracelet!” Nikola held Melanie’s bracelet out to Georgie, and she took it. “It’s a very lovely! Very sweet! I would love one like it someday!”

“Maybe someone will make one for you someday?” Georgie glanced up at Daniel and Sarah, but she missed their reactions.

“You think so?” Nikola asked.

“I do.” She really did. 

“Aw!” Nikola through her arms around Georgie, and she noticed that Nikola’s clothes were very soft. She was pretty sure it was a ringmaster costume, as well. Georgie hugged her in return. “Thank you! You’re very sweet!”

Nikola let go after a few seconds. 

“I think I should be going,” Georgie pointed at the doorway. 

“Alright then! We’re gonna go watch the arm dissolve!” Nikola informed her before going back to the stairs. “Goodbye!”

Georgie waved to Nikola, then to Daniel and Sarah, before leaving. Melanie was dead, but her arm looked like it had regenerated a bit. Georgie took her jacket off and put it on Melanie so that no one would see her arm had been freshly cut off while she took her back to the shop. She also slipped the bracelet on Melanie’s other wrist. 

She was surprised that nothing had happened to that old bracelet until now. Georgie hadn’t heard anything about it breaking or going missing in the centuries that Melanie had owned it. It must have really meant a lot to her. 

Georgie smiled and kissed her girlfriend on the head before picking her up and carrying her back to Gertrude.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Nikola Orsinov and I ended up really liking the dynamic between her, Sarah and Daniel.


	13. “Why exactly do you need chloroform at 2AM?”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From a time before Michael set out on their own to find themselves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don’t mind me I’m just projecting onto Michael and Gerry.

Gerry, the quartermaster, called them Spirals since they didn’t know their own name and because they had spirals on most of their skin. The engineer, Sasha, also called them Spirals. So did the navigator, Tim. 

Martin, the doctor, didn’t call them Spirals. Neither did Jon, the Archivist. They weren’t sure why they didn’t.

The others didn’t call them that either, but the others did not talk with them as much. 

Gerry, Jon and Martin spoke with them daily. 

Martin always wanted to make sure that they were doing well. He was very nice, and they liked him a lot. 

Jon asked them questions and tried to give what little information he had on the planet they might have came from, Esmentiaras. He was trying to help them remember what had happened, but unfortunately all he really knew was that the planet did not often contact the outside world and that there was no record of a living person who had ever been there. Jon also recorded that Esmentiaras was now gone, since he was the archivist.

Tim was nice to them. So was Sasha. 

Georgie, the communications manager, was kind to them, but she did not talk to them very often.

Melanie, a gunner, was not very polite, but they learned she was always that way.

Daisy, the other gunner, did not say a lot to them, and they learned that she was also always that way.

Basira, the pilot, was nice and seemed comfortable around them even though they did not know each other well.

But whenever they made brief stops at different planets so that Gerry—he had asked that they call him Gerry, not Gerard—could get supplies that the crew needed, he took them with him. Martin thought it might help jog their memory in some way.

It had been several years, and they didn’t remember anything from these trips that would’ve helped them remember who they were or what happened on Esmentiaras, but they were nice. They decided they liked to help Gerry do the shopping, and they expressed this to him. He said he liked having them along. He said It made things go by faster. Then they would wander the streets for hours and look for nothing in particular.

They liked being under the sky and the sun, or sometimes a few suns. They had gotten dizzy and the world seemed very dim on their first trip off the ship. It was on a planet called Sannikov. It was nice there, though. Warm and lush and lovely. They felt as though it wasn’t the first time they had been in a place such as Sannikov, but it triggered no particular memory.

Small cities with rows of shops that had a height that did not obscure the sky too much were also familiar. 

That wasn’t enough to help them, though. They used to be frustrated by the fact that they couldn’t remember, but the truth had started scaring them lately. They found it hard to sleep, and they often went days without it. 

The spirals on their skin did not glow quite like they once did. The soft light that the patterns gave were dull all of the time now, as were the swirling, fluid colors they shifted between. Martin had noticed and asked them about it, but they lied and told them they knew nothing about it. They think that worried him even more, and they thought they would tell him the morning after that lie about how they were really feeling. They weren’t really sure how to put it though.

They would first have to sit through another sleepless period of time until then. Most of the crew didn’t sleep every night. They always felt the need to sit in their room alone when they should be sleeping, even when the others didn’t. They didn’t think they needed to sleep every night, either, but it had been awhile since they had done it last.

Martin might have had something to help, but he was sleeping. They vaguely remembered a conversation about chloroform between Sasha and Jon, and they knew it put people to sleep. Maybe it would work on them, even if they weren’t entirely human.

Gerry was the person who kept track of the ship’s supplies. Maybe he knew if they had anything like that, but they weren’t sure if he was awake. They decided to go check his room anyways.

He was. They didn’t think that Gerry slept often either. They had knocked gently on his door and announced themselves, and he told them to come in.

He was sitting up on his bed when they entered, but he hadn’t been sleeping. He didn’t look tired or like he had been disturbed.

“Hey, Spirals,” He greeted them, his voice soft but completely alert. “What’s up?”

“Do you know if we have chloroform?” They hadn’t always been good at being straightforward or asking for things, but Martin had told them that it was okay to do that. 

“Why exactly do you need chloroform at...” Gerry looked at the clock on his bedside table. “2 AM?”

Gerry sounded amused, but they weren’t entirely sure why.

“To sleep,” They told him. “Is it not used for that?”

“Well, not traditionally. I mean, if you’re having sleep problems then you shouldn’t use chloroform. There are other things that are made for helping you sleep, but chloroform isn’t healthy. I’m pretty sure it can make you sick and also kill you,” Gerry explained.

“Oh...” They looked at the ground as if on instinct. “Oh... right... I’m sorry.”

“What for?” Gerry’s eyebrow furrowed, and when they glanced up at him they noticed. 

“I just feel kind of silly...” No, that wasn’t quite the word, but they had used the right word to describe themselves out loud before. Martin had gotten very upset and told them over and over again that they were wrong.

“Don’t feel silly,” Gerry smiled, but only slightly. “You didn’t know it was bad for you. I mean, you probably could use it, since dying wouldn’t really be an issue, but you could still get sick. Maybe. Actually, I don’t know if you can get sick.”

“I don’t either...”

Gerry paused, and they felt his eyes on them. When they looked up again, their eyes met, and he looked away.

“I keep a catalog of everything we have in storage. I can look and see if we have anything, but I don’t remember buying any sort of sleep aids. If anyone has any, though, it’s definitely Martin,” Gerry went to his desk at the corner of his room and turned on his computer.

“Martin’s asleep. I don’t want to bother him,” They stayed in the same place they had been standing, about a foot away from the door to the room.

“I don’t think you’d be bothering him. I think he’d be glad you told him, actually,” Gerry typed his password into the computer. It must have been a long one, given how many keys he was pressing, but he entered it rather quickly. 

“That was a very long password,” They walked closer to him.

“Yeah, it’s actually a song lyric, but with some stuff changed so it’s harder to guess.”

“What’s the song?” 

“I can’t tell you. If I did, you might figure out the password,” Gerry was obviously joking, and that made them smile. “It’s from a band called Grifter’s Bone. I’m not telling you the song, though.”

“I’ve never heard of them.”

“Well, they’re not really famous. Their style of music isn’t for everyone, but they’re a band of immortal space pirates that tell tales of things they’ve witnessed in space.”

“They’re immortal as well?”

“Yeah. They’re mechanized, too. Not sure who did it to them. Jon hates them, though. I don’t think he’s ever met the band, he just genuinely believes their music is garbage.

Gerry had opened a list of something on his computer and was scrolling through it. They were standing right behind his chair now.

“Do you mind if I look?” They asked him. Gerry turned quickly to look at them, like he was surprised.

“Not at all, go ahead,” Gerry sounded a little different. Almost like he was on edge suddenly. They hadn’t meant to surprise him, maybe that’s what had done it. 

They put their hands on the back of Gerry’s chair and leaned in a way so that their heads were next to each other. Gerry had started scrolling and reading again, but then he froze when they leaned closer.

“Hello?” They looked over at him, but he was still looking at the screen.

“Sorry, I’m just... looking at something...”

“What is it?” 

Gerry tried to give an answer, but he couldn’t form words very well.

“Are you alright?” They asked.

“Yes. I’m fine. Would you like to sit down?” 

They noticed that Gerry’s face was flushed, and he almost sounded urgent in the way he spoke.

“Where...?” They looked around the room. There were no other chairs or anything that could substitute for one. 

“Oh... right, I guess you can’t really... unless you want to sit on my bed, but you can’t see from there,” Gerry’s attention was on the monitor again. There wasn’t really anything to see on the screen, since it was literally just a list of items they had in storage. They didn’t know what else to do while they waited, though. 

They ended up kneeling next to Gerry’s chair and placing their arm on the desk so that they could rest their head against it. They found themselves looking over at Gerry every now and again, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“I’m sorry, Spirals, I’m not seeing anything,” Gerry said after awhile. “No chloroform, either.”

“Oh... well, thank you for looking.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to ask Martin? I’ll even ask him for you, if you want.”

“No, he needs to sleep.”

“So do you,” Gerry looked down at them and crossed his arms. They did not answer. “You Really should go see him.”

“I will tomorrow. I need to talk with him anyways. I think maybe I’ve been thinking too much, and that’s why I can’t sleep...” They sighed against their own arm, their face still pressed against it, but they were facing Gerry.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been thinking a lot lately and my thoughts make me anxious,” They weren’t sure if they wanted to elaborate. Gerry asked them if they wanted to talk about it, and they said they didn’t. 

Gerry started to type something on his keyboard again, and then something started to play quietly from his speakers. It was instrumental music at first, and then someone was talking, telling a story about a starship and her captain. They were in love, and they were fleeing from something.

“What is this?” They asked.

“Swan Song. It’s by Grifter’s Bone. It’s not a very happy song, unfortunately, but I think it’s nice.”

They listened to it for a moment as another voice began to sing.

“It is nice,” They agreed, even though it wasn’t over yet. They felt sort of relaxed suddenly and kind of warm. “Thank you for sharing it with me.”

“No problem.”

“Is this the song that you got your password from?”

Gerry would neither confirm nor deny.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would anyone like some friendship between Michael and Martin?   
> Anyways, Swan Song is beautiful to me and very romantic.   
> Also I could’ve sworn I posted this last night but apparently not.


	14. “I’m like 75% sure this won’t explode on us.”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sasha tries to fix a microwave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE READ!  
> A terminal illness is talked about in this chapter. It’s made up, just wanted to make sure you guys are aware.

“How did this even happen?” Sasha glanced over at Tim, who held his hands up defensively. 

“Why are you looking at me? I didn’t do anything!” 

“I didn’t say you did, I just looked at you,” Sasha turned her attention back to the microwave, which had stopped working.

“There are literally seven other people to look at,” Tim gestured to the rest of the crew. They were all sitting in the kitchen together, which wasn’t something they did often. 

“I believe him,” Gerard said. “But only because I can’t even remember when we bought that microwave. It’s probably time for a replacement.”

“I can fix it,” Sasha unplugged the microwave and started unscrewing the back of it.

“Have you ever actually fixed a microwave before, though?” Martin asked her.

“No,” Sasha shrugged. “How hard could it be, though?”

“This is a bad idea...” Martin sighed.

“Relax. I’m like 75% sure this won’t explode on us,” Sasha’s words were not reassuring in the slightest, and Martin clearly didn’t pick up on the fact that she was joking. She saw his uncomfortable expression and rolled her eyes. 

“I’m sure you thought the same thing before you died for the first time, too,” Tim wasn’t helping.

“Martin, I promise it’ll be fine. Have I ever lied to you?” Sasha asked after giving Tim a very threatening look. 

“Yes. Plenty of times. You’re also on EJM mode, so I know that you’re capable of lying,” Martin answered. 

“Isn’t there like a manual or something that maybe came with it?” Basira asked. “Maybe that might tell you how to fix it.”

“If it did, we wouldn’t have kept it,” Tim shook his head. “Maybe we can look it up online, though.”

“We would need to know what the problem is before knowing what to look up,” Sasha was taking the back off the microwave using a screwdriver to unscrew the bolts. “Just let me explore a bit. The worst that’ll happen is that the microwave won’t be able to be fixed and we’ll have to get a new one.”

“Hold on, I know Tim mentioned this, like, thirty seconds ago, but you died in an explosion?” Melanie asked. Well, not everyone in the crew had told everyone else their origin story.

“Yep. I grew up on Hamelin, got my master’s degree in mechanical engineering, but then I started working in a factory that made guns, which was pretty common on Hamelin. Then there was an explosion and I died. Not sure why Elias chose my corpse to mechanize out of the dozen others, but he did. Now I’m fixing a microwave.”

“How did you first die, Melanie?” Tim was the one who asked her. She thought for a moment, then answered.

“My legs were bitten off by a space shark.”

Pretty much everyone but Georgie, Daisy, Basira and Jon looked at Melanie, completely baffled.

“She always has different answers,” Georgie told them. “It’s her way of saying that she isn’t going to tell you.”

“You could’ve just said that, now you’ve got me freaked out about space sharks,” Tim groaned, and Martin did a poor job of stifling his laughter. “I don’t like the look of sharks, Martin, you know that. We’re in space all the time, and now I’m gonna be looking out my window and make myself uncomfortable by imagining a space shark coming right at me.”

“They aren’t real, though,” Martin said.

“I don’t care. They’re in my brain now!” Tim slammed a hand on the table. “And I’m afraid of them!”

“So’s Michael, actually,” Gerry chimes in. 

“See, I’m not the only person!” Tim turned to Martin.

“But they aren’t bad—“

“I never said they were bad, I said that I’m scared of them. Their mouths are too big, they have too many teeth, and their eyes are black and beady. I know they’re just fish and they have no concept of what is right and what is wrong, but they scare me!”

“I know, I’m just saying—“

“You know what we ought to do if everyone’s comfortable?” Tim talked loudly until Martin sighed and stopped trying to eradicate Tim’s fear of sharks. “Let’s go around and tell everyone how we died before becoming mechanized, since we’ve been on this ship together for thousands of years and yet not everyone knows this about each other! You don’t even have to give details, just how it happened. I’ll go first. I got poisoned.”

It was Martin’s turn. “Oh... er... drowning.”

Then Daisy’s. “Murdered.”

Basira. “Murdered.”

Gerry. “Murdered as well.”

“Sky around me, guys, that fucking sucks,” Tim said.

“I’m sorry, what?” Jon narrowed his eyes at the phrase Tim used. “What does that even mean?”

“Oh, it’s a thing they say on Titan. It’s kinda like saying ‘gods in heaven,’ except a lot of people on Titan worship the sky. I guess I picked it up from Mike, since he says it around me a lot.”

“That still doesn’t make any sense since the sky is above them.”

“They live in the sky! They live in the sky on platforms, and if you were to look over the edge of one of them you would probably just see clouds. I didn’t even make the phrase up so I don’t know why you’d be asking me this!”

“The sky isn’t even around you right now. It’s just space,” Sasha pointed out, and Tim shushed her.

“Lost my legs,” Melanie was next in the circle, so she kept the game—or whatever it was—going. Well, Tim did say she didn’t have to give details.

“Oh,” It was Georgie’s turn now. “Well, I didn’t die. I had Haan’s disease, and Elias offered to perform an experimental surgery on me for free if Jon allowed him to perform a different experimental surgery on him first.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Martin glanced over at Jon, who sighed. 

“I thought you said you were a broke college student and you let Elias perform surgery on you because you needed the money,” That’s What Tim had been told, at least. It was also what Sasha and Martin had been told. The only person who’d been told the actual story was Melanie.

“I told you the truth. I just didn’t give you anymore unnecessary details,” Jon looked a bit uncomfortable suddenly.

“I can give you more details!” Georgie happily volunteered. “If you’re alright with that, Jon.”

Jon shrugged, then rested his forehead against his hand.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Georgie gave Jon another chance to protest, but he didn’t. “Well, Jon and I both knew each other every since we were little. We went to college together and we shared a flat.

I found out I had Haan’s disease three semesters in, and since treatment is really expensive Jon did everything he could to try and help. We were both working as much as we could while still trying to stay in school, but I ended up dropping out after a few weeks. 

The disease got worse, obviously, and it was hard to walk or stand, so I ended up in a wheelchair. Moving in general was hard, actually. It was painful as well. I couldn’t work anymore, so I quit. Jon dropped out of school and worked as much as he could, be even tried raising funds online.

Eventually he got an email from Elias Bouchard who read about our situation on one of his campaigns. He said that he performed experimental surgeries on animals to replace their body parts with mechanical ones. We’d never heard of mechanization. He wanted something in return, though.

He wanted to perform a different surgery on a willing participant first. If that surgery was a success, he would perform it on me and replace all of my bones. Not all at once, but he’d do one to replace the ones in my hand for instance, wait for me to adjust to that, then move on to a new section of my body. If that surgery failed, though, he would pay for my treatment in full. He also casually mentioned that side effects would include immortality. According to Jon, it wasn’t the first thing on the list. I guess he thought he was being sly, but Jon read the whole email and asked him about it.

He said every living creature that had undergone the procedure was now ageless and unable to die. If you cut off their limbs, they would just regenerate.

Jon didn’t believe him, and he probably wouldn’t have proposed the idea to me if we weren’t desperate. He told me about the immortality thing, but he said Elias was probably joking. I didn’t really care. I mean, even if he was right, immortality didn’t sound so bad. 

I asked Jon where we’d find someone who’d be willing to go through with the procedure, and he said he was going to do it. He wouldn’t argue with me. So, he got into contact with Elias, and here we are now.”

“And now Sasha is fixing a microwave,” Melanie added. Sasha had actually stopped fixing the microwave a bit after Georgie started telling her storing.

“Wow,” Tim said. “Well, good on you, Jon.”

“Yeah, good on you, Jon, for helping save my life,” Georgie put her arm around Jon, who made an uncomfortable sound. “He doesn’t like when people praise him for doing good deeds because he has to keep up his image of a grumpy librarian.”

“The jig is up, Jon! We know you’re capable of loving things other than your octocats and data!” Tim pointed at Jon, who took that as an invitation to leave.

“Yes, you caught me. Well done,” Jon walked towards the door. “I’ll be in the library.”

“That was actually very sweet of him,” Martin said after Jon had gone.

“It was,” Georgie agreed.

“Well, I guess you were right about him being sweet, Martin,” Tim teased. “And the good news is we’ve confirmed he can feel emotion other than melancholy, so your chances with him are better than they’ve ever been.”

“Tim! Why would you say that in front of everyone?” Martin covered his face.

“Martin, my dear, darling friend,” Tim put a hand on everyone’s shoulder. “Literally everyone on this ship knows about your feelings for Jon except for Jon.”

“The ship also knows about your feelings for Jon,” Sasha had gone back to taking the microwave apart.

“Oh gods...” Martin groaned.

“Relax,” Gerry got up to leave as well. “He’s never gonna notice, and it’s not like we’re going to tell him. Your secret is safe, even though you’ve practically put your feelings for Jon in a glass display case with a spotlight on it.”

“I don’t want to hear it from you, Mister ‘The Same Eldritch Being and I Fucked Exclusively For Centuries and Yet We Still Didn’t Know We Had Feelings For Each Other Until Very Recently,’” Sasha pointed her screwdriver at Gerry.

“How long have you been waiting to say that to me?” Gerry looked back at her. She flipped him off, and he returned the gesture, then walked out the door.

“I think you should tell him, Martin,” Georgie reached across the table to take his hand, but he was too far away so she just allowed her fingertips to graze he arm.

“That’s a terrible idea, Georgie,” Regardless, Martin moved his hands to that he could touch hers. 

“I don’t think so,” She squeezed his hand reassuringly.

“Sasha, how’s it going with the microwave,” Martin was clearly trying to change the subject, and everyone let him. For now.

“Oh, there’s no way I’m gonna be able to put this back together,” Sasha confessed. “We’re definitely going to have to buy a new one.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made Tim have a fear of sharks because I’ve had an extremely bad fear of sharks since childhood. If I looked at a shark when I was younger I’d freak out. It’s gotten better and Jaws is actually one of my favorite movies, but aquariums and being surrounded by the color blue still freak me out. Also if I were to watch a movie with a shark that looked more realistic then I’d freak out. Sharks aren’t bad, though! I don’t think they’re capable of being bad, they’re just big fish and they don’t mean to attack humans. They just really make me anxious and I can’t help it.   
> Anyways! Wow I really did a thing, huh? I kinda wanna do plot oriented stuff for this, and I do have something in mind, but I kind of also like the freedom of writing whatever comes to mind. I do want to talk more about Elias though and if he returns I feel like that warrants a plot. Anyways, fuck capitalism and thank you for reading, I’m gonna sit in my room and decide if I wanna grow my hair out really long or shave it all off.


End file.
